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ANTHROPOLOGY. 


^v^  i3uvn^y'0  pixirrks* 


Atonement  and  Law  Reviewed.  12mo.  240  pages. 
Price  $1.25.  An  able  review  of  Dr.  Armour's  Atone- 
ment and  Law.  Dr.  Burney  vigorously  combats  the 
substitutionary  theory. 

Psychology.  550  pages.  Cloth.  Price  $1.75.  The 
discussion  divided  into  (I)  Intellect,  (II)  Sensibility, 
(III)  Will.     Adopted  by  several  schools. 

Moral  Science.  12mo.  Cloth.  402  pages.  Price 
$1.50.     Everywhere  commended  as  a  work  of  merit. 

Soteriology.  400  pages.  Price  $1.50.  A  forceful 
statement  of  the  author's  views  upon  the  atonement. 

Anthropology.  Price  $1.25.  Edited  by  R.  W.  Bink- 
ley. 

To  be  published  at  early  day  :  Christologv  and  Medi- 
ation, and  Doctrines  op  Grace. 


ANTHROPOLOGY. 


A    DISCUSSION   CHIEFLY    OP   THE   PROBLEM   OP   EVIL;   OP   MAN    AS    A 

SINNER  ;    THE   RELATION  OF  THE  FIRST  MAN   AND   HIS 

POSTERITY  ;    SIN    AND    PHYSICAL    EVIL,    ETC. 


BY  S.  G.  BURNEY,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

Late  Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  in  Cuiulierland  rnlversity. 


NASHVILLE,  TENN. : 

CUUBRRLAND  FRESBYTKRIAN    PUBLISHING  HOUSK. 
1894. 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE. 


The  name  of  S.  G.  Burney  upon  the  title-page  of  this  hook  is 
a  sufficient  guarantee  of  its  merit.  The  work  is  given  to  the 
public  because  the  author's  candid  and  scholarly  discussion 
of  the  subjects  treated  cannot  fail  to  be  helpful  to  every  stu- 
dent who  seeks  clear,  rational  and  scriptural  views  upon 
Anthropology.  This  volume  is  published  in  the  discharge 
of  a  trust  committed  to  me  by  the  author  and  in  response 
to  the  demand  of  those  who  were  students  of  Theology  under 
him,  as  well  as  of  others  who  appreciate  his  ability  and  value 
his  teachings. 

The  editor  acknowledges  gratefully  the  valuable  assistance 
rendered  by  Rev.  C.  H.  Bell,  D.D.,  and  Rev.  B.  G.  Mitchell,  A.M. 

R.  W.  BlNKI^EV. 


CONTENTS. 

Chapter  I.    Origin  of  the  Mind  or  Soul,  -        -        -        -  1 

Section  1.     Pre-existentism          -        .        -        -        -  2 

Section  2.    Creationism, 4 

Section  3.    Traducianism, 8 

Chapter  II.     Imputation, 16 

Chapter  III.    Sin, 27 

Section  1.    The  terms  used  to  give  us  the  idea  of  sin,  -  28 

Section  2.    Sin  considered  as  lawlessness,  -        -        -  34 

Sections.    The  ground  of  sovereignty,  -        -        -    -    -  37 

Chapter  IV.    Sin  (continued), 53 

Chapter  V.     Sin  (continued), -  07 

Section  1.     Sin  as  an  act, -•  67 

Section  2.    Sin  as  a  state,          -        -        -        -        .        -  68 

Section  3.    Sin  as  a  state  subjects  us  to  punishment,  -  74 

Section  4.    The  relation  of  sin  and  its  punishment,       -  75 

Section  5.    Sin  and  its  pardon, 7S 

Chapter  VI.    The  Relation  of  Sin  to  Natural  or  Physi- 
cal Evil, 83 

Section  1.     Does  sin  sustain  a  casual  relation  to  all 

evil,  physical  as  well  as  moral  ?    -        -        -        -  83 

Section  2.     Are  death  and  all  human  sufferings  penal  ?  -  88 

Chapter  VII.     The  Relation  of  Sin  to  Natural  or  Physi- 
cal Evil  (continued), 103 

Chapter  VIII.    Sin,  Transgression  and  Iniquity,     -        -  122 

Chapter  IX.     Life  and  Death, 1.34 

Chapter  X.      Necessitated   Virtue ;    or.   Holiness  and 

Probation, 154 

Chapter  XI.    General  Conclusions,       ....  170 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


One  learned  and  greatly  beloved  author,  who  lately  passed 
to  the  spirit-land  where  all  mysteries  are  unfolded  to  his 
inquiring  mind,  left  in  the  form  of  lectures  to  the  Theologi- 
cal classes  of  Cumberland  University,  the  contents  of  the 
following  pages,  wherein  the  essential  facts  relating  to  the 
perplexing  problem  of  sin,  especially  the  moral  relation  of 
the  first  man  and  his  children,  seem  to  be  more  fully  harmon- 
ized than  in  any  discussion  hitherto  published.  With  char- 
acteristic modesty,  he  does  not  claim  to  have  obviated  all 
difficulties,  but  he  has  certainly  thrown  a  flood  of  light  there- 
on, and  in  a  scholarly  and  masterly  manner  vindicated  the 
ways  of  God,  presenting  a  theory  free  from  absurdities.  The 
reader  will  be  interested  and  instructed  as  the  author  tersely 
and  successfully  supports  his  positions  by  scripture  proofs 
and  by  inductive  logic.  C.  H.  Bei.1,. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


Anthropolog}-  is  literally  the  doctrine  of  man.  Man  is  a 
complex  being  of  numerous  relationships.  Anthropology,  in 
its  most  comprehensive  sense,  treats  of  man  in  all  the  essen- 
tial and  accidental  characteristics  of  his  being,  and  in  his  di- 
versified relationships. 

I.  It  treats  of  him  as  an  animal  and  sensuous  being,  and  of 
his  relations  as  such  to  the  lower  animals,  to  his  own  species, 
and  to  his  Creator  and  Supreme  Benefactor. 

II.  It  treats  of  him  as  a  rational  being,  possessing  intellect, 
reason,  judgment,  understanding;  also  sensibilities,  affect- 
tions,  desires,  and  emotions ;  also  freedom  and  volitional 
powers. 

III.  It  treats  of  him  as  an  aesthetical  being,  capable  of  a  sense 
of  the  beautiful,  of  enjoying  pleasure  from  the  contemplation 
of  the  works  of  nature  and  art;  also  of  apprehending  and  en- 
joying the  grand  or  sublime  in  the  realms  of  matter,  mind,  and 
morals. 

IV.  It  treats  of  him  as  a  moral  being,  capable  of  a  sense  of 
moral  distinctions  of  right  and  wrong,  of  a  sense  of  obligation 
to  his  Maker  and  his  neighbor;  also  capable  of  moral  retribu- 
tion through  the  consciousness  of  right  and  wrong  doing. 

V.  It  treats  of  him  as  a  religious  being,  capable  of  a  knowl- 
edge of  God  as  the  Supreme  Object  of  reverence,  love,  and 
obedience  ;  also  capable  of  knowing  himself  as  a  devout,  rev- 
erent, and  obedient  child  and  worshiper  of  God ;  also  capable 
of  knowing  himself  as  a  sinner,  a  willful  rebel  against  God, 
with  a  heart  sensual  and  devilish,  not  subordinate  to  God  nor 


Vlll.  INTRODUCTORY. 

able  to  give  himself  a  new  and  better  nature,  or  to  deliver  him- 
self from  his  opposition  to  God,  or  from  the  fearful  conse- 
quences of  his  moral  corruption  and  guilt. 

Of  the  first,  second,  third  and  fourth  of  these  several  aspects 
or  departments  of  Anthropology,  I  have  previously  treated  in 
a  brief  and  somewhat  informal  way  in  Psychology-  and  Ethics. 
To  the  fifth  Division,  particularly  the  last  part  of  it,  viz.,  man 
as  a  sinner,  and  to  the  doctrine  of  salvation  by  grace,  the  fol- 
lowing pages  are  devoted. 

Before  proceeding  with  the  discussion  proposed,  it  may  be 
both  interesting  and  instructive  to  bring  under  review  certain 
theories  presented  by  Christian  writers  in  regard  to  the  ori- 
gin of  the  mind  or  soul. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ORIGIN    OF    THE    MIND     OR    SOUL. 

MAN  is  called  a  rational  animal.  What  distin- 
tinguishes  him  from  all  other  animals  and  el- 
evates him  immensely  above  them  is  the  posses- 
sion of  a  rational  and  an  immortal  spirit  or  soul* 
Of  the  origin  of  the  genus  homo  we  have  a  very 
brief  account  in  Genesis.  "And  God  said,  Let  us 
make  man  in  our  image  after  our  likeness.  So 
God  created  man  in  his  own  image,  in  the  image 
of  God  created  he  him  ;  male  and  female  created 
he  them.  And  the  Lord  formed  man  of  the  dust  of 
the  ground,  and  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath 
of  life,  and  man  became  a  living  soul." 

This  is  by  far  the  most  reasonable  and  satisfactory 
account  that  we  have  of  the  origin  of  our  bodies. 
It  leaves  us  no  ground  for  doubt.  It,  however,  gives 
us  no  decisive  information  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
spirit,  soul  or  mind,  except  it  was  given  by  God. 
It  does  not  tell  us  whether  the  mind  had  existence 
prior  to  the  body,  and  was  breathed  into  it  upon  its 
formation  ;  or  whether  it  was  newly  created  and 
united  to  the  body  when  the  body  was  formed  ;  or 
whether  it  was  strictly  a  concreation  of  the  body. 
The  exact  meaning  of  the  words,  "breathed  into 
his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life,"  is  not  quite  certain. 


2  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

What  life  is  meant?  The  life  of  the  body  or  that 
of  the  spirit,  or  both?  The  words,  "he  became  a 
living  sonl,"  are  alike  ambiguous.  Does  soul  here 
mean  animal  life,  as  it  often  does,  or  does  it  mean 
the  immortal  spirit?  These  texts  do  not  definitely 
settle  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  soul,  except 
that  it  comes  from  God.  No  other  texts  throw  any 
material  light  on  the  subject.  Ecc.  iii.  21,  xii.  7, 
Job  xii.  10,  Isaiah  xlii.  5,  are  sometimes  appealed  to 
by  disputants,  but  it  is  generally  conceded  that  they 
give  no  clue  to  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  diffi- 
culty. (^The  question  is  manifestly  a  philosophical 
rather  than  a  biblical  one^  It  is  generally  discussed, 
however,  by  writers  on  ^stematic  Theology.  This 
is  done  chiefly  because  of  its  supposed  bearing  on 
the  hotly  contested  doctrine  of  Original  Sin.  Dif- 
ferent persons,  however,  holding  the  same  theologi- 
cal creed  disagree  as  to  the  origin  of  the  soul. 

The  principal  hypotheses  that  have  been  sup- 
ported by  Christian  writers  are  Pre-existentism, 
Creationism,  and  Traducianism. 

Sec.  I. — Pre-existentism. — Pythagoras,  Plato 
with  some  of  his  followers,  and  some  of  the  Cabal- 
ists  among  the  Jews  taught  that  God,  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world,  created  all  souls  that  have 
been  or  may  be  connected  with  human  bodies, 
one  of  which  unites  with  a  human  body  when 
it  is  formed.  Those  holding  to  pre-existence, 
however,  differed  as  to  whether  these  souls  were 
created  specifically  for  human  bodies  with  which 
they  voluntarily  united  ;    or  whether  they   were 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  MIND  OR  SOUL.  3 

originally  designed  for  a  more  exalted  sphere  of 
activity  and  enjoyment,  and  were,  as  a  punish- 
ment for  their  apostasy  from  God,  forced  into  hu- 
man bodies  as  into  a  prison.  Plato  and  others  seem 
to  have  held  the  latter  opinion.  Platonic  philoso- 
phy had  no  inconsiderable  influence  upon  the 
Christian  church  in  various  respects.  Some  of  its 
brightest  ornaments  and  ablest  defenders  believed 
with  Plato  that  the  soul  was  a  part  of  the  divine 
nature — a  spark  of  the  Deity.  This  belief,  how- 
ever, was  not  universal.  Origin  believed  in  pre- 
existence,  but  rejetced  the  idea  that  the  human 
soul  is  a  part  of  the  Deity.  He  held  with  the  Pla- 
tonists  in  saying  that  souls  sinned  before  they  were 
united  with  a  body,  in  which  they  were  inprisoned 
as  a  punishment  for  their  sins. 

Some  of  the  Jews,  it  seems,  in  the  time  of  Christ 
were  affected  with  this  doctrine  of  the  metempsy- 
chosis— transmigration  of  souls.  This  is  doubted 
by  many  able  writers,  but  John  ix.  i,  2.,  and  Matt, 
xvi.  14.  seem  to  admit  of  no  intelligible  explana- 
tion on  any  other  hypothesis. 

The  pre-existence  of  human  souls  was  clearly 
taught  by  Justin  Martyr  (Diat.  cum  Tryphone  Ind.). 
This  has  been  the  common  opinion  of  Christian 
mystics  of  ancient  and  modern  times.  They  usu- 
ally adhere  to  the  Platonic  theory,  and  regard  the 
soul  as  a  part  of  the  divine  nature,  from  which  it 
proceeds  and  to  which  it  will  again  return.  The 
doctrine  is  now  generally  abandoned  by  Christian 
writers.  (See  McClintock  &  Strong,  Soul,  Origin 
of.)  (His  Ch.  Doctrine,  Shedd.) 


4  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Sec.  II. — Creationism. — '*  The  advocates  of  this 
theory  called  Creationists  believed  that  the  soul  is 
immediately  created  by  God  whenever  the  body  is 
begotten  .  .  .  Cyril  of  Alexandria  and  Theo- 
doret  among  the  Fathers  in  the  Greek  church, 
■were  of  this  opinion,  and  Ambrose,  Hilary  and 
Jerome  in  the  Latin  church.  The  schoolmen  al- 
most universally  professed  this  doctrine,  and  gener- 
ally the  followers  of  Pelagius,  with  whom  the 
schoolmen,  for  the  most  part,  agreed  in  their  views 
in  regard  to  the  native  character  of  man  ;  for  these 
views  derived  a  very  plausible  vindication  from  the 
hypothesis  that  the  soul  was  immediately  created 
by  God  when  it  was  connected  with  the  body.  The 
argument  was  this :  If  God  created  the  souls  of 
men,  he  must  have  made  them  either  pure  and 
holy,  or  impure  and  sinful.  The  latter  supposition 
is  inconsistent  with  the  holiness  of  God,  and  con- 
sequently the  doctrine  of  the  native  depravity  of 
the  heart  must  be  rejected.  To  affirm  that  God 
made  the  heart  depraved  would  be  to  avow  the 
blasphemous  doctrine  that  God  is  the  author  of 
sin.  The  theory  of  the  Creationists  was  at  first 
favored  by  Augustine,  but  he  rejected  it  as  soon  as 
he  saw  how  it  was  employed  by  the  'Pelagians.  It 
has  continued,  however,  to  the  present,  the  doctrine 
of  the  theologians  of  the  Romish  church,  who  in 
this  follow  after  the  schoolmen,  and  like  them  mak- 
ing little  of  native  depravity,  and  much  of  the 
freedom  of  man  in  spiritual  things.  Among  the 
Protestant  teachers  Melancthon  was  inclined  to 
the  hypothesis  of  the  Creationists^  although,  after 


Origim  Of  THE  Mind  or  Soul.  5 

the  time  of  Luther  another  hypothesis  was  received 
with  much  approbation  by  Protestants.  Still  many 
distinguished  Lutheran  teachers  of  the  seventeenth 
century  followed  Melancthon  in  his  views  concern- 
ing this  doctrine,  i.  e.,  G.  Calixtus.  In  the  Reformed 
church,  the  hypothesis,  which  we  are  now  consid- 
ering, has  far  more  advocates  than  any  other, 
though  even  they  have  not  agreed  in  the  manner 
of  exhibiting  it.  Dr.  Shedd  (His.  chr.  Doct.  Vol. 
II,  pages  II,  12)  says:  "  Creationism  .  .  .  is  a 
mixed  theory.  As  respects  the  human  soul  it 
teaches  that  there  are  as  many  repeated  and  suc- 
cessive feats  of  creation  as  there  are  individuals  in 
the  series  of  human  beings  ;  while  so  far  as  the 
human  body  is  concerned,  there  is  but  a  single 
creative  fiat.  In  the  instance  of  each  and  every 
individual  soul  after  Adam  there  is  creation  but  no 
procreation  or  propagation.  In  the  instance  of 
each  and  every  individual  body  after  Adam,  there 
is  procreation  or  propagation  but  not  creation. 
The  physical  part  of  every  man  considered  as  a 
creatioii  de  nihilo^  dates  back  of  birth  and  individual 
existence  to  the  creation  act  mentioned  in  Gen. 
I.  27  ;  but  this  spiritual  part,  as  a  creation  de  nihilo^ 
dates  back  only  to  birth,  or  to  the  commencement  of 
individual  existence,  in  whatever  generation  or 
year  of  the  world  it  happens  to  be.  Reckoning 
from  the  strict  and  absolute  creation  of  each,  the 
body  of  a  man  of  this  generation,  upon  the  theory 
of  Creationism,  would  be  six  thousand  years  older 
than  his  soul  ;  for  there  is  this  interval  of  time 
between  the  creative  fiat  that  originated  the  former 


6  Anthropology. 

and  the  creative  fiat  that  originated   the   latter. 
The  theory,  therefore,  is  a  composite  one." 

Remarks,  i.  Creationism  refers  both  bod)  and 
soul  to  God  as  cause,  regarding  the  first  as  a  direct 
creation  and  the  second  as  a  procreation.  But  it 
does  not  follow  that  my  body,  on  this  assumption, 
is  six  thousand  years  older  than  my  soul.  Such 
cannot  be  the  case  unless  it  is  indeed  true  that  in 
creating  the  body  of  Adam  God  actually  created 
the  bodies  of  all  men,  which  I  suppose  none  but 
realists  would  admit.  Dr.  Shedd  conceives  that 
God  created  all  men  in  a  mass  and  that  procreation 
is  no  more  than  the  division  of  this  mass  into  indi- 
viduals, hence  that  the  child  of  to-day  is  as  old  as 
Adam. 

2.  This  view  confounds  potentiality  with  actual- 
ity. If  this  is  true,  Adam  is  as  old  as  God,  or  the 
same  reasoning  that  proves  the  child  to  be  as  old  as 
Adam,  proves  Adam  and  all  created  things  to  be 
eternal. 

3.  It  assumes  human  nature  to  be  divisible  ;  that 
it  existed  in  its  entirety  in  Adam,  but  not  in 
Cain  or  any  one  individual  of  his  descendants.  (This 
will  be  more  fully  noticed  subsequently.)  Adam 
"  begat  a  son  in  his  own  likeness  after  his  image." 
If  his  entire  human  nature  was  not  imparted  to 
Seth,  then  it  is  not  true  that  the  son  was  in  the  im- 
age of  his  father.  Human  nature  in  its  essential 
attributes  admits  of  no  division  and  the  realistic 
conception  of  humanity  cannot  be  true.  Adam,  as 
to  his  body,  was  created  or  formed  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground  ;  but  his  creation  was  not  identical  with  that 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  MIND  OR  SOUL.  7 

of  the  ground  ;  nor  was  the  creation  of  Cain  iden- 
tical with  that  of  Adam.  The  creation  of  organic 
beings  is  the  origination  or  beginning  of  a  species  of 
being-s  of  like  characteristics.  Procreation  is  the 
perpetuation  of  the  original  type,  not  by  division, 
but  by  the  actual  origination  of  another  being  iden- 
tical in  kind  with  the  progenitor,  but  a  different 
and  independent  individuality.  The  creation  of  an 
organic  being  is  the  origination  de  novo  independ- 
ently of  a  prior  like  organism.  Procreation  is  the 
origination  de  novo  of  an  organism  through  a  prior 
like  organism.  The  difference  relates  simply  to 
modes  of  creation  and  not  to  the  fact  of  creation. 
The  act  creating  Adam  did  not  create  Abraham  or 
any  of  his  posterity. 

According  to  Dr.  Shedd's  views,  he  being  both 
realist  and  traducianist,  the  child  of  to-day  is  as  old 
both  as  to  soul  and  body  as  is  Adam.  Only  recently 
individualized,  where  has  it  existed  in  its  unindi- 
vidualized  state?  Has  God  a  special  depository  for 
humanity  in  an  unindividualized  mass?  Or,  as 
abstract  human  nature  cannot  exist  independently 
of  the  individualized  man,  shall  we  assume  that  the 
child  of  to-day  has  existed  for  ages  as  an  integral 
part  of  Adam  and  all  its  ancestors  until  its  own  in- 
dividualization, really  taking  part  in  all  their  acts, 
partaker  of  all  their  joys,  sins  and  sorrows?  Un- 
reasonable as  all  this  may  be,  it  is  the  necessary 
outcome  of  realistic  traducianism  as  we  shall  see. 

Creationism,  I  think,  is  not  true,  and  though  it 
is  a  composite  theory  in  that  it  refers  the  creation 
of  the  soul  and  body  to  diflferent  modes  of  origina- 


d  Anthropology. 

tion — the  soul  to  direct  creation,  and  the  body  to 
indirect  creation.  Still  it  is  not  so  abhorrent  to 
reason  as  Dr.  Shedd's  argument  represents  it.  In 
fact,  it  seems  less  unreasonable  that  the  body  should 
be  six  thousand  years  older  than  the  soul  (which 
the  creationist  does  not  admit),  than  that  both  soul 
and  body  should  exist  as  an  active  and  responsible 
participant  in  the  doings  of  all  its  ancestors  from 
Adam  down  to  its  own-  individualization. 

Sec.  III. — Traducianism. — The  third  general  the- 
ory -concerning  the  soul  is  called  Traducianism. 
'  'According  to  this  theory  the  souls  of  children  as 
well  as  their  bodies  are  propagated  from  their  par- 
ents. These  two  suppositions  may  be  made  :  Either 
the  souls  of  children  exist  in  their  parents  as  real 
beings  (entia)  like  the  seed  in  plants,  and  so  have 
been  propagated  from  Adam  through  successive 
generations,  which  is  the  opinion  of  Leib^iitz  in  his 
Thodea(I.,  91),  or  they  exist  in  their  parents  merely 
potentially  and  come  from  them  per propaganem  or 
traducem.  .  .  .  This  hypothesis  formerly  prevailed 
in  the  ancient  Western  Church.  .  .  .  This  is  the 
hypothesis  to  which  the  opponents  of  the  Pelagians 
have  been  most  generally  inclined.  .  .  .  Since  the 
Reformation  this  theory  has  been  more  approved 
than  any  other,  not  only  by  philosophers  and  natur- 
alists, but  also  by  the  Lutheran  Church.  Luther 
himself  appeared  much  inclined  toward  it,  though 
he  did  not  declare  himself  distinctly  in  its  favor  ; 
but  in  the  Formula  Concordiae  it  was  distinctly 
taught  that  the  soul  as  well  as  the  body  was  prop- 


Origin  of  the  Mind  or  Soul.  9 

agated  by  parents  in  ordinary  generation."  (Mc- 
Clintock  &  Strong.     Soul,  Origin  of.) 

"  The  theory  of  traducianism  maintains  that  both 
the  soul  and  body  of  the  individual  man  are  propa- 
gated. It  refers  the  creative  act  mentioned  in  Gen- 
esis i.  27,  to  the  human  nature  or  race,  and  not  to  a 
single  individual  merely.  (Vl  considers  the  work  of 
creating  mankind  de  nihilo  as  entirely  completed 
upon  the  sixth  day  ;  and  since  that  sixth  day  the 
Creator  has,  m  this  world,  exerted  no  strictly  crea- 
tive energ^  He  rested  upon  the  seventh  day,  and 
still  rests.  By  this  single  act  all  mankind  were 
created,  as  to  both  their  spiritual  and  sensual  sub- 
stance in  and  with  the  first  human  pair,  and  from 
them  have  been  individually  procreated  and  born, 
each  in  his  day  and  generation.  Creation  relates  to 
the  origination  de  nihilo  of  the  total  substance  or 
nature  of  mankind,  considered  as  a  new  and  hitherto 
non-existent  species  of  being.  Birth  is  subsequent 
to  creation  and  refers  only  to  the  modifications 
which  this  substance  undergoes — its  individualiza- 
tions in  the  series  of  generations."  (Hist.  Chris. 
Doctrine.     Vol.  H.,  p.  13.) 

(i)  None  except  realists  can  accept  this  view  of 
traducianism.  Strictly  it  is  not  traducianism  or 
procreationism  ;  but  is  rather  the  metamorphosis  of 
an  existent  being  from  one  form  into  another,  as 
the  change  of  a  tadpole  into  a  frog.  There  is  nei- 
ther procreation  nor  traduction  in  the  changing  of 
a  tadpole  into  a  frog,  or  of  an  ^^^  into  a  bird.  But 
the  ^^%  has  absolutely  no  existence  prior  to  its 
origination  in  the  mother.     Otherwise  potentiali- 


lo  Anthropology. 

ties  and  actualities  are  the  same,  and  all  possibili- 
ties are  actualities. 

According  to  Dr.  Shedd  all  men  soul  and  body, 
were  created  with  Adam,  and  have  actual  being 
thousands  of  years  before  they  have  individual  be- 
ing, and  what  he  calls  their  procreation  is  not  pro- 
creation or  generation  or  traduction,  but  purely 
metamorphosis  from  one  actual  state  into  another. 

(2)  Another  objection  to  the  theory  in  hand  is  in- 
congruity in  the  use  of  the  terms. 

According  to  it,  Adam  was  created  only,  not  pro- 
created. But  Cain  and  all  others  are  both  created 
and  procreated.  But  creation  and  procreation  are 
mutually  exclusive.  Both  originate  being,  and  one 
as  truly  as  the  other,  but  not  by  the  same  method. 
Creation  is  direct  without  media.  Procreation  is 
indirect  through  media,  or  through  progenitors. 
God  is  as  truly  the  originator  in  the  one  case  as  the 
other.  Procreation  produces  the  ancestral  type,  but 
as  really  produces  a  new  being  as  does  creation. 
God  in  creating  Adam  did  not  create  Cain,  but  only 
imparted  to  him  the  power  of  human  parenthood, 
which  is  only  the  power  of  reproducing  as  an  in- 
strument of  creative  energy  his  own  likeness  in  a 
new  being. 

According  to  the  realistic  view  the  deity  exerts 
no  creative  energy  in  the  innumerable  forms  of  an- 
imal and  vegetable  life  with  which  the  earth  in 
successive  generations  is  caused  to  abound.  This 
doctrine  is,  I  think,  contradicted  by  every  science 
that  throws  any  light  on  the  subject;  also  by  the 
Bible,  notably  by  Job  xxxi.   15,  Isaiah  xliv.  2,  24; 


Origin  of  the  Mind  or  Soul.         n 

xlix.  5.  Dr.  Shedd  in  support  of  his  theory  refers 
to  Gen.  ii.  2,  and  says,  "  God  rested  on  the  seventh 
day  and  still  rests. "  The  text  certainly  means  that 
God  having  created  the  progenitors  of  all  the  differ- 
ent orders  of  organic  beings,  rested  (ceased)  from 
that  mode  of  creating.  This  surely  does  not  mean 
that  he  is  not  continually  exerting  his  power 
through  ancestral  organisms  in  the  production  of 
new  creatures. 

FACTS  THAT  PROVE  OR  SEEM  TO  PROVE  TRADUCIANISM. 

I.  Physiological  science  strongly  favors  this  view ; 
and  its  facts  are  hard  to  reconcile  with  any  other 
hypothesis. 

"Adam  begot  a  son  in  his  own  likeness  after  his 
image" — Gen.  v.  3.  If  the  soul  and  body  were  not 
both  begotten,  then  it  could  hardly  be  true  that  the 
son  was  in  his  father's  likeness,  and  after  his  image. 
Seth  would  have  been  the  son  of  Adam  only  as  to 
his  body,  but  the  son  of  God  as  to  his  soul,  as  was 
Adam. 

It  is  true  that  some  use  this  text  to  prove  crea- 
tionism,  urging  that  if  souls  are  propagated,  then 
they  cannot  be  in  the  likeness  of  that  of  Adam 
which  was  not  propagated  but  created.  This  argu- 
ment assumes  that  two  things  cannot  be  alike  un- 
less they  are  both  produced  by  the  same  process. 
As  well  might  it  be  said  that  two  pictures  cannot 
resemble  the  same  person  unless  they  are  made  by 
the  same  artist  or  by  the  same  process. 

Again,  the  argument,  if  it  proves  anything, 
proves  too  much  ;  for  if  Seth's  soul  could  not  be 


t±  Anthropology. 

like  Adam's,  unless  he  was  directly  created  by  God, 
because  Adam's  was  so  created,  neither  could  Seth's 
body  be  like  Adam's,  which  was  directly  so  created. 
This  shows  the  fallacy  of  the  argument. 

2.  The  doctrine  of  traducianism  seems  to  be  fully 
proved  by  the  obvious  fact  that  children  resemble 
their  parentage  not  less  in  their  mental  character- 
istics than  in  their  physical. 

(i)  Peculiar  bodily  forms,  sizes,  complexions,  ges- 
tures, tones  of  voice  and  general  manners  often 
characterize  families  for  many  generations. 

(2)  So  of  their  intellects,  brilliancy,  acuteness, 
accuracy,  obtuseness.  An  adaptation  to  some  partic- 
ular intellectual  pursuit  or  study  or  vocation  often 
adheres  to  the  same  family  for  generations. 

(3)  The  same  is  true  of  the  emotional  nature,  the 
passions,  affections,  appetites  and  propensities. 

(4)  ^len,  it  is  allowed,  differ  very  much  in  the 
character  of  their  will  power — some  have  much, 
some  have  little,  some  stubborn  and  some  fickle 
wills  and  these  characteristics  are  evidently  trans- 
missible from  parent  to  progeny.  The  fact  that 
they  are  characteristics  of  particular  families  can  be 
accounted  for  only  on  the  ground  of  heredity. 

(5)  The  rule  also  holds  in  relation  to  our  sesthet- 
ical  nature.  Members  of  the  same  family  generally 
have  strikingly  similar  tastes  in  relation  to  t^e 
same  objects. 

(6)  The  moral  and  religious  characteristics  also 
seem  if  possible  to  be  more  rigidly  under  the  law 
of  heredity  than  any  other  human  characteristic. 

(7)  That  most  terrible  of  mental  afflictions,  in- 


Origin  of  the  Mind  or  Soul.        i3 

sanity,  leaves  no  reasonable  doubt  of  the  fact  that 
souls  of  the  progeny  are  derived  from  the  parentage. 

3.  The  fact  that  the  sacred  scriptures  represent 
children  as  being  born  in  a  depraved  state  seems  to 
confirm  the  hypothesis  that  the  soul  is  not  directly 
created  by  God,  but  is  a  derivation  from  the  paren- 
tage just  as  really  and  in  the  same  manner  as  the 
body.  (Seelsa.  xlviii.  8;  Ps.  Iviii.  3;  li.  5;Eph.  ii.  3.) 

Certainly  no  one  would  admit  that  God  would 
create  a  soul  with  a  corrupt  or  depraved  nature  ; 
nor  can  we  admit  that  a  pure  spirit  can  be  morally 
corrupted  by  contact  with  a  sensuous  body,  for  the 
body  apart  from  the  soul  is  incapable  of  moral  cor- 
ruption. On  the  contrary,  the  soul  subjects  the 
body  to  such  corruption  so  far  as  it  is  capable  of 
defilement. 

This  array  of  facts  might  be  much  enlarged  and 
they  admit  of  explanation  on  no  hypothesis  so  sat- 
isfactorily as  upon  that  of  the  propagation  of  soul 
as  well  as  body. 

It  is  sometimes  objected  to  traducianism  that  it 
favors  the  doctrine  of  materialism,  or  that  the  soul 
like  the  body  is  material  and  must  perish  with  the 
body. 

The  objector  seems  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
the  first  man  was  created  as  truly  a  rational  and  im- 
mortal spirit  as  he  was  a  mortal  animal.  This  being 
true,  the  divinely  ordained  law  that  like  produces 
like,  would  infallibly  insure  the  rational  and  im- 
mortal spirit  to  the  progeny,  otherwise  like  would 
not  produce  like.  But  as  the  law  confessedly  holds 
good  in  the  whole  realm  of  organic  life,  lower  in 


14  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

the  scale  of  being  than  man,  we  certainly  have  no 
right  to  make  the  human  race  an  exception  with- 
out the  most  explicit  authority.  This  is  confessed- 
ly wanting.     The  objection  is  therefore  of  no  force. 

If  traducianism  is  true,  then  procreation  or  prop- 
agation is  simply  creation  de  nihilo  continued 
through  the  instrumentalities  of  previously  created 
progenitors  ;  or  God  is  continually  creating  new 
organisms  in  the  likeness  of  pre-existing  types. 
This  view  of  creation  favors  the  hypothesis  that 
providence  is  simply  the  act  of  creation,  indefinitely 
continued.  Hence  God's  creative  energy  is  as  truly 
exerted  in  procreation  as  in  creation,  in  the  creation 
of  the  infant  of  to-day  as  in  the  creation  of  Adam. 
Many  scripture  texts  seem  strongly  to  favor  the 
idea.  (Gen.  xxx.  2,  Job  xxxi.  15,  Ps.  cxxix.  13, 
Isa.  xHv.  2,  24,  Isa.  xlix.  5.) 

Traducianism  gives  us  a  comparatively  easy  solu- 
tion of  the  much  debated  problem  of  universal  de- 
pravity. We  have  only  to  accept  the  Bible  fact 
that  our  natural  head  did  by  voluntary  trangression 
corrupt  his  own  heart  or  moral  nature  which  was 
by  the  law  of  heredity  transmitted  to  his  posterity 
in  accord  with  the  invariable  law  that  like  pro- 
duces like. 

If  it  should  be  objected  that  this  view  seems  to 
make  the  progenitor  not  the  medium  but  rather  the 
originator  of  the  progeny,  it  seems  sufficient  to  re- 
ply that  specific  character  of  the  progeny  is  always 
determined  by  that  of  the  medium  or  organism,  and 
not  by  the  creative  power.  (^  We  have  a  pretty  fair 
illustration  in  the  ingrafting  of  one  kind  of  fruit 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  MIND  OR  SOUL.  15 

upon  another.  The  root  or  stock  supplies  the  orig- 
inating and  life-giving  power,  but  the  engrafted 
scion  determines  the  quality  of  the  fruit.  So  in 
traducianism  the  creative  energy  of  God  is  the  orig- 
inating and  life-giving  power;  the  progenitor  or 
traducing  medium  determines  the  character  of  the 
progeny.  J) 


CHAPTER  II. 

IMPUTATION. 

BEFORE  considering  the  subject  of  sin  proper, 
let  us  first  briefly  bring  under  review  certain 
schemes  of  imputation. 
I.  The  Augustinian  scheme  as  revised  and  im- 
proved by  Anselm. 

Augustine's  Theory  of  Imputation. 

I  will  first  notice  his  explanation  of  how  all  men 
sin  in  Adam.  He  assumes  distinct  origin  for  * '  hu- 
man nature  "  or  humanity,  and  for  the  individual 
man  Adam. 

He  does  not  tell  us,  so  far  as  I  know,  whether 
these  distinct  origins  are  strictly  synchronal  or  not 
synchronal  ;  of  course  they  are  not  synchronal  as 
to  Adam's  posterity.  But  in  the  order  of  nature, 
humanity  is  prior  to  the  individual,  because  the  in- 
dividual man  is  only  the  individualization  of  hu- 
manity. This  humanity  was  created  intelligent, 
free,  and  holy,  and  of  course  man,  its  individualiza- 
tion, was  likewise  created  intelligent,  free  and  holy. 

As  the  whole  of  humanity  existed  in  the  one  man 
Adam,  the  first  sin  was  as  truly  the  sin  of  humanity 
as  it  was  of  the  individual  man.  Hence  by  the  one 
sin  of  the  individual,  both  the  individual  and  the 
whole  of  human  nature  became  equal  participants 


IMPUTATION.  17 

in  the  same  sin.  But  every  human  being  is  just  as 
truly  an  individualization  of  this  common  human 
nature  as  was  Adam,  and  consequently  did  volunta- 
rily participate  in  the  first  sin,  being  only  an  indi- 
vidualization of  the  common  human  nature  which 
voluntarily  sinned  in  Adam. 

According  to  this  theory  the  first  individual  cor- 
rupted the  whole  of  human  nature,  and  then  this 
corrupted  human  nature  corrupts  all  other  individ- 
uals. Such  is  the  theory  of  the  origin  and  univer- 
sality of  human  depravity. 

We  may  respect  this  logic  as  being  ingenious,  but 
cannot,  without  closing  our  eyes,  accept  it  as  true. 

Its  whole  force  rests  on  the  realistic  element, 
with  which  it  is  interwoven.  Anselra  shows  him- 
self a  realist.  In  the  language  of  Bauer,  he  main- 
tains "the  actual  existence  of  a  universal  (human- 
ity) that  is  distinguished  from  the  individual'' 
(Adam). 

He  assumes  human  nature  to  be  a  real  objective 
entity,  prior  in  the  order  of  nature  to  the  existence 
of  the  indvidual  man  ;  that  men  are  only  individu- 
alizations of  this  prior  humanity. 

He  thus  educes  the  concrete  from  the  abstract,  or 
real  existence  out  of  the  ideal.  But  humanity  or 
human  nature  is  in  reality  only  an  abstract  term, 
representative  of  the  aggregated  characteristics  of 
the  individual — a  mere  term  of  classification.  The 
things  represented  by  such  abstracts  are  not  real 
entities,  but  only  conceptions  of  the  mind.  Ab- 
stracts have  no  existence  independent  of  the  con- 
crete   entities    which    they    generically    describe. 


l8  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

There  can  therefore  be  no  physical  nature  indepen- 
dent of  physical  entities  ;  no  divine  nature  inde- 
pendent of  a  divine  Being.  It  was  not  human 
nature  that  was  created,  for  it  has  no  existence  ex- 
cept in'  the  mind,  but  man  was  created.  It  was  not 
human  nature  that  was  created  upright,  but  man. 
It  was  not  human  nature  that  was  corrupted,  but 
man  ;  and  when  we  speak  of  corrupt  human  nature, 
we  simply  mean  that  men,  humankind,  are  corrupt 
and  not  that  something  is  corrupt  which  has  been 
metamorphosed  into  men. 

When  the  realism  of  Anselm's  argument  is  elim- 
inated it  falls  to  pieces. 

By  the  same  kind  of  logic  Ansel m  attempts  to 
show  not  only  how  all  men  become  corrupt,  but 
actually  guilty  ;  also  how  infants  voluntarily  sinned 
in  Adam.  This  he  does  to  his  own  satisfaction  un- 
der the  auspices  of  his  realism.  He  invests  abstract 
humanity  with  all  the  attributes  of  a  real  moral 
agent.  He  says  these  facts  must  be  taken  into  ac- 
count : 

"First,  there  is  a  common  human  nature,;  second- 
ly, there  is  a  particular  individual ;  thirdly,  the 
individual  is  a  production  from  the  humanity.  But 
this  third  fact,  that  all  men  are  produced  out  of 
human  nature,  explains  how  all  are  sinners  at  birth. 
The  individual  Adam  corrupted  human  nature  and 
human  nature  corrupted  every  individual.  But 
human  nature  voluntarily  sinned,  and  as  the  infant 
is  a  production  from  this  human  nature,  therefore 
the  infant  voluntarily  sinned  in  Eden." 

This  is  another  phase  of  the  Augustinian  expla- 


Imputation.  19 

nation  and  involves  the  absurdity  of  predicating  of 
the  germ  or  potentiality  what  is  true  of  that  in 
which  it  exists,  as  noticed  before  and  need  not  be 
rediscussed. 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  part  of  Anselra's 
discussion  of  original  sin  is  that  in  which  he 
attempts  to  prove  that  Adam's  first  sin,  but  none  of 
his  other  sins,  and  none  of  the  sins  of  his  other 
progenitors,  is  imputed  to  his  posterity. 

The  vital  point  in  the  argument  is  the  fact  that 
the  whole  of  the  human  nature  was  included  in 
Adam  and  Eve  when  this  first  sin  was  committed. 
He  says  substantially,  as  stated  by  Prof.  Shedd, 
' '  The  first  act  of  transgression  was  unique.  There 
was  never  a  second  like  it.  The  sins  of  Cain  or 
Abel  or  any  other  individual  were  not  the  trans- 
gressions of  an  individual  who  included  within 
himself  the  entire  humanity.  Even  the  individual 
transgressions  subsequent  to  the  first  act  of  apostasy 
were  only  manifestations  in  his  particular  person  of 
the  generic  (first)  sin  and  sustained  the  same  rela- 
tion to  it  that  the  transgression  of  any  other  indi- 
vidual does.  There  is  therefore  no  imputation  of 
the  subsequent  individual  sin  of  Adam  to  his  pos- 
terity. That  is  only  imputed  to  all  men  which  all 
men  have  committed ;  and  the  only  sin  which  all 
men  have  committed  is  that  one  sin  which  they  all 
committed  when  they  all,  *"  ille  units  komo^''  were 
that  human  nature  in  the  first  human  pair." 

This  doctrine,  the  imputation  of  Adam's  first  sin 
and  not  of  his  other  sins,  nor  the  sins  of  other  pro- 
genitors to  his  posterity,  is  of  vital  importance  to 


20  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

the  whole  Augustinian  and  Calvinistic  scheme. 
For  if  this  is  not  true  then  the  whole  theory  of  the 
so-called  Adamic  covenant  —  federal  headship, 
unique  relationship,  etc. — falls  to  the  ground  as  a 
worthless  speculation,  and  it  would  consequently 
follow  that  there  was  only  natural  headship  in 
Adam,  and  that  he  sustained  to  his  posterity  only 
such  relations  as  do  other  parents. 

Anselm  stakes  this  whole  theory  upon  the  argu- 
ment in  the  quotation  given  above. 

I.  My  first  adverse  statement  is  that  the  whole  of 
this  celebrated  argument,  like  those  previously 
noticed,  is  vitiated  by  its  realism,  and  might  there- 
fore be  dismissed  as  unworthy  of  further  comment, 
but  as  great  value  is  attached  to  it  by  some,  I  will 
give  it  further  consideration. 

He,  Adam,  was  derived  from  a  common  human- 
ity. He  did  possess  certain  characteristics  on  ac- 
count of  which  he  was  reckoned  a  human  being. 
He  did  actually  possess  a  nature  properly  called 
human.  But  this  nature  he  propagated  whole  and 
entire,  whatever  may  be  its  essential  characteristics. 
We  often  speak  of  man's  animal,  intellectual  and 
moral  natures.  Perhaps  we  might  regard  these 
several  characteristics  as  the  essential  characteristics 
of  human  nature.  These,  as  we  have  seen,  do  not 
exist  as  something  objective,  but  only  as  qualities 
in  concrete  forms — are  not  entities  from  which 
Adam  was  formed,  but  essential  attributes  of  the 
man.  Now  it  will  be  allowed  by  all  whose  eyes 
have  not  been  put  out  by  their  logic,  that  Adam 
propagated   these  qualities  in   their  entirety,  and 


IMPUTATION.  21 

human  nature,  which  is  but  the  sum  of  these 
qualities,  to  all  his  posterity.  Hence  it  follows 
that  human  nature  exists  to-day  in  every  man  in  its 
completeness  as  it  did  in  Adam.  If  this  is  true  the 
entire  humanity,  or  human  nature,  as  truly  existed 
in  Cain  or  Abel  as  it  did  in  Adam,  Hence  it  fol- 
lows, despite  the  freaks  of  Anselm's  logic,  that  if 
Adam's  first  sin  was  imputed,  because  entire  human 
nature,  rightly  understood,  existed  in  him  at  the 
time  of  its  commission,  then  Cain's  sin  was  equally 
imputable  for  the  same  reason,  and  so  the  sins  of  all 
other  parents. 

In  the  argument  I  have  used  the  term  humanity 
as  the  generic  characteristic  of  men,  while  Anselm 
uses  it  as  an  objective  entity  from  which  man  was 
derived.  If  I  have  correctly  used  the  term  my 
argument  shows  the  utter  fallacy  of  his  reasonings. 

2.  But  granting  for  argument's  sake  Anselm's 
conception  of  human  nature,  there  seems  to  be  some 
flaw  in  his  reasoning.  If  Adam's  first  sin  was  impu- 
table only  while  all  humanity  was  resident  in  him, 
would  not  all  his  sins  committed  previous  to  the 
derivation  or  distribution  of  that  humanity  be  for 
the  same  reason  imputable?  If  like  causes  under 
the  same  conditions  may  be  depended  upon  for  like 
results,  this  would  certainly  be  true.  Hence,  if  the 
first  sin  vitiated  the  supposed  mass  of  human  nature 
while  it  was  all  resident  in  one  man,  then  without 
a  miraculous  interference  two  or  a  dozen  would 
vitiate  it  still  more,  and  hence  all  Adam's  sins 
before  Cain's  individualization  are  imputed. 

3.  I  am  tempted  to  exclaim.  What  a  calamity 


22  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

to  the  world  that  Adam  did  not  distribute  this  ob- 
jective human  nature  to  the  world  before  he  cor- 
rupted it,  then  the  world  would  never  have  known 
sin  !  Adam  and  Eve  could  not  have  sinned,  and 
no  one,  no  one  pair  of  their  descendants  could  have 
sinned  because  entire  human  nature  would  not 
have  been  resident  in  one  or  one  pair. 

4.  The  assumption  in  Anselm's  argument  is 
that  this  human  nature  is  not  propagable  in  its 
entirety,  but  only  in  parts.  "The  sins  of  Cain 
were  not  the  transgressions  of  an  individual  who 
included  within  himself  the  entire  humanity,  there- 
fore his  sins  were  not  imputable."  But  according 
to  the  logic,  what  was  imputed  to  Cain  was  sub- 
tracted from  Adam;  so  with  Abel;  so  with  Seth. 
We  do  not  know  how  many  children  Adam  had. 
A  loose  tradition  says  fifty-six.  If  so,  after  the 
fifty-sixth  derivication  of  humanity  how  much  did 
our  first  father  have  left? 

The  whole  affair  is  as  ridiculous  as  it  is  unrea- 
sonable, and  merits  the  lash  of  the  satirist  rather 
than  the  respectful  attention  of  the  theologian. 

5.  In  the  quotation  above  given  it  is  said: 
"Even  the  individual  transgression  of  Adam  sub- 
sequent to  the  first  act  of  apostasy  was  only  a  man- 
ifestation in  his  particular  person  of  the  generic 
sin." 

If  this  proposition  is  cautiously  stated,  as  I  sup- 
pose it  to  be,  it  seems  to  teach  that  there  is  no  sin 
but  this  generic  sin.  The  manifestation  of  a  thing 
and  the  thing  itself  are  diflferent  things.  If  we  are 
allowed  to  make  this  just  discrimination  between  a 


Imputation.  23 

thing  and  its  manifestation  in  this  case,  then  it  fol- 
lows that  all  Adam's  subsequent  sins  so-called,  as 
all  the  so-called  sins  of  all  men,  are  only  manifesta- 
tions of  the  "generic  sin."  Anselmdoes  not  else- 
where so  teach,  still  the  exigencies  of  the  case 
required  him  to  maintain  this  position  in  order  to 
prove  that  none  but  Adam's  first  sin  could  be  im- 
puted. For  if  he  had  admitted  that  Adam's  subse- 
quent sin  sprang  from  the  action  of  his  free  will, 
then  no  reason  could  be  assigned  while  human  na- 
ture continued  entire  in  him,  why  his  subsequent 
sins  should  not  be  imputable. 

All  attempts  to  illustrate  the  relation  of  Adam 
and  his  posterity  by  human  institutions  are  inade- 
quate. 

ZWINGLl'S  THEORY  OF   IMPUTATION. 

Zwingli  thus  seeks  to  illustrate  imputation.  He 
says,  "All  men  who  are  born  from  Adam  can  be 
regarded  as  one  man,  just  as  all  who  are  members 
of  one  civil  community  may  be  regarded  as  one 
body,  and  the  whole  community  as  one  man." 

OBJECTIONS. 

I.  A  civil  community  may  truly  be  regarded  as 
one  man,  and  one  man  be  made  to  suffer  unjustly 
for  a  whole  community,  and  a  whole  community  to 
suflfer  on  acconnt  of  one  man.  But  this  is  because 
of  the  imperfections  of  human  institutions,  and  of 
ignorance  or  dishonesty  or  weakness  of  their  ad- 
ministrators. But  still  it  is  true  that  the  acts  of  a 
community  are  not  the  acts  of  an  individual,  nor 
are  the  acts  of  an  individual  the  acts  of  a  commu- 


24  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

I 
nity.     Our  acts  are  not  Adam's  acts,  nor  his  acts 

our  acts,  though  we  may  suffer  on  account  of  them. 

Zwingli  illustrates  this  relationship  by  the  rela- 
tion of  a  bondwoman  to  her  children.  She  being 
in  a  state  of  slavery  her  children  are  born  slaves. 
The  illustration  is  inapt.  Such  slavery  is  civil 
bondage  and  such  children  are  slaves,  not  by  nat- 
ural or  divine,  but  only  by  human  or  civil  law. 
Her  acts  are  not  her  children's  acts,  her  virtue  not 
their  virtue,  her  guilt  not  their  guilt.  She  trans- 
mits to  her  children  human  nature  and  not  her  ad- 
ventitious character. 

No  comparison  drawn  from  human  institutions 
or  from  anything  artificial  or  supernatural  can  ade- 
quately illustrate  the  relation.  Nature  alone  can 
furnish  the  true  illustration,  the  unerring  analogy. 
The  requisite  analogy  or  illustration  is  furnished 
only  in  the  immutable  and  unerring  laws  of  hered- 
ity established  by  the  great  Creator  for  the  perpet- 
uation and  conservation  of  his  works,  especially  of 
human  kind. 

2.  Another  objection  to  the  orthodox  theory  of 
imputation  is  its  artificial  and  extraordinary  char- 
acter or  its  unnaturalness.  (^The  physical  world  is 
in  many  respects  a  sort  of  sensible  adumbration,  a 
great,  yet  veritable  symbolization  of  the  moral  and 
the  spiritual  world.  In  fact  the  physical  and  the 
moral  largely  overlap  each  other,  or  are  in  many 
respects  largely  coincident,  so  that  what  is  physical 
in  one  aspect  of  it  is  moral  in  another.  Both  may 
sometimes  require  the  interposition  of  the  super- 
natural, but  never  when  the  end  intended  can  be 


IMPUTATION.  25 

accomplished  by  the  natural.  The  law  of  parsi- 
mony is  strictly  the  law  of  means  in  the  Divine  ad- 
ministration. If  sufficiency  of  means  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  end  is  at  hand  a  redundancy 
is  never  employed.  This  is  as  true  of  the  moral  as 
of  the  physical  world.  God  is  able  to  create  as 
many  plants  and  animals  or  men  as  he  may  wish, 
and  whenever  he  may  wish.  This  he  could  do  in- 
stantly by  fiat  or  by  evolution  as  he  might  choose. 
But  he  chooses  to  make  one  or  a  pair  of  each 
species  of  flora  or  fauna  or  men,  and  make  each 
self-perpetuative  or  procreative.  His  immutable 
decree  is,  "  Like  produces  like."  This  law  rules  su- 
preme over  all  the  self-perpetuating  organisms  of 
the  world,  no  less  over  the  rational  than  over  the 
irrational  organizations.  This  is  the  law  of  hered- 
ity. That  it  does  reign  supreme  and  that  it  does 
accomplish  its  functions  in  the  vegetable  world, 
also  in  the  irrational  animal  world,  also  in  man's 
physical  nature,  also  in  his  intellectual  nature,  is 
readily  admitted  by  all  that  accept  the  doctrine  of 
traducianism  in  its  full  extent.  Why  then  should 
we  at  this  point  abjure  the  jurisdiction  of  the  law  of 
heredity,  and  refuse  to  accept  the  idea  that  the 
human  progenitor  does  actually  transmit  to  his 
progeny  his  moral  nature  as  literally  and  fully  as 
he  does  his  physical,  his  intellectual,  his  emotional, 
his  volitional  nature?  On  this  hypothesis  there 
is  an  exact  and  full  analogy  in  the  operation  of  the 
law  of  heredity  in  relation  to  both  tlie  physical  and 
moral  aspect  of  humankind.  On  this  plan  man's 
moral  nature  is  just  as  readily  accounted  for  as  his 


26  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

physical  or  intellectual  nature.  The  only  difficul- 
ties in  the  case  are  in  determining  what  that  moral 
nature  is,  and  how  his  ancestry  came  in  possession 
of  it. 

The  Almighty  did  npt  create  this  law,  then 
create  man  and  other  things  and  then  put  them  un- 
der it,  nor  did  he  create  man  and  other  things  and 
then  create  this  law  to  determine  the  relation  be- 
tween the  parent  and  the  progeny.  But  the  law 
and  its  subjects  are  pure  concreations.  Exactly 
the  same  is  true  of  the  moral  law.  The  law  and 
the  subjects  are  concreations.  If  this  is  true  there 
is  no  need  for  the  realistic  or  for  the  Federal 
Headship  theory  of  imputation.  The  Natural 
Headship  theory  gives  a  more  rational  account  of 
the  doctrine  of  human  depravity,  and  is  withal  bet- 
ter sustained  by  the  sacred  Scriptures, 


M 


CHAPTER  III. 

SIN. 
MAN  CONSIDERED  AS  A  SINNER. 
AN  as  a  sinner  is  pre-eminently  the  brancli  of 
Anthropology  with  which  theologists  are  ac- 
customed to  deal. 

The  supreme  end  of  the  gospel  is  to  save  men 
from  their  sins.  The  supreme  end  of  preaching 
the  gospel  is  to  persuade  men  to  forsake  their  sins 
and  to  come  to  Christ. 

The  lawyer,  in  order  to  help  his  client,  needs  not 
only  to  know  the  law,  but  also  to  know  the  exact 
nature  of  the  client's  case.  The  physician  in  order 
to  relieve  his  patient  needs  to  understand  both  the 
disease  and  the  remedy. 

It  is  likewise  a  matter  of  the  first  importance  that 
the  preacher  in  order  to  have  efficiency  in  his  call- 
ing should  know  at  least  something  of  the  nature 
of  sin — know  what  it  is,  and  what  it  is  not.  What 
are  its  essential  characteristics,  and  what  are  not 
such  characteristics.  Also  to  know  what  is  its 
remedy  and  how  that  remedy  becomes  available. 
A  knowledge  of  these  things,  more  or  less  thorough, 
is  also  a  prime  necessity  to  all  laymen  who  would  be 
eflfective  co-laborers  with  the  ministry  in  the  work 
of  persuading  and  enabling  sinners  to  forsake  sin 
and  come  to  Christ. 


28  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Even  the  sinner  himself  that  desires  to  be  saved, 
needs  first  of  all  to  know  something  of  the  nature 
of  his  sins,  and  of  the  remedy,  of  the  conditions 
through  which  it  becomes  available  to  his  salvation. 
Your  closest  attention  is  therefore  invited  to  these 
two  great  and  vital  questions.  Sin  and  its  only, 
but  all-sufficient,  remedy.  The  logical  order  is  sin 
and  its  remedy.  The  whole  need  not  a  physician, 
but  they  that  are  sick.  ^ 

Sec.  I. — The  terms  used  to  give  us  the  idea  of  sin. 
— The  doctrines  of  the  Bible  are  comprised  in  its 
terminology.  The  doctrine  of  sin  including  its  es- 
sence and  characteristics  is  of  course  comprised  in 
the  words  used  by  the  oracles  of  revelation  to  define, 
explain,  and  characterize  sin.  A  brief  reference  to 
these  terms  cannot  fail  to  give  us  some  proper  idea 
of  what  sin  is,  and  as  to  how  it  effects  the  human 
mind  and  conduct;  also,  how  it  affects  our  relations 
to  God  and  to  our  fellow  men. 

HEBREW  OR  OLD  TESTAMENT  TERMS. 

I.  Several  different  words  are  used  in  the  Hebrew 
scriptures  to  express  the  doctrine  of  sin.  The 
more  prominent  of  these  are  as  follows: 

(i)  Asham^  defined  by  "guilt"  and  "guilt  offer- 
ing." 

(2)  Ashmah^  defined  by  "guilt"  and  "guilt 
offering." 

(3)  C-^^/,  defined  by  "sin,"  "error,"  "failure." 

(4)  Chataah^  defined  by  "sin." 

(5)  Chattaah^  defined  by  "sin." 


S/N.  29 

(6)  Chattath^  defined  by  "sin"  and  "sin  offer- 
ing." 

This  is  the  prevailing  word  for  sin  in  the  Old 
Testament. 

(7)  Chattai^  defined  "sin." 

(8)  Avon^  defined  by  "iniquity." 

(9)  Pesha^  defined  by  ' '  trespass ' '  and  * '  trangres- 
sion." 

All  these  Hebrew  words  are,  in  our  English  Bible, 
translated  by  our  word  sin.  Several  of  them  are 
also  translated  guilt  or  sin  offering  or  offering  for 
sin;  as  Asham,  Isa,  liii.  10:  "Thou  shalt  make  his 
soul  an  offering  for  sin;"  Chataah,  Ps.  xl.  6: 
"  Burnt  offering  and  sin  offering  hast  thou  not  re- 
quired." Chattah,  Ezra  vi.  17:  "For  a  sin  offer- 
ing for  all  Israel."  Chattah,  Ez.  xxx.  10:  "With 
the  blood  of  the  sin  offering  of  atonement." 

2.  The  principal  Hebrew  verbs  for  "to  sin"  are 
as  follows: 

(i)  Chata,  defined  "to sin"  or  "miss  the  mark." 

(2)  Asah,  defined  "to  do,"  "to  make"  and 
translated  "sinneth,"  in  Num.  xv.  29. 

(3)  Shagag  is  defined  "to  err,  to  go  astray," 
translated  "sin,"  in  Num.  xv.  28. 

(4)  Shagah  is  defined  in  the  same  way,  and  is 
translated  "sin"  in  Lev.  iv.  13. 

3.  The  corresponding  nouns  for  sin  in  the  New 
Testament  are  the  following : 

(i)  Hamartema^  denned  "sin,"  "transgression." 

(2)  Haniartia^  defined  "sin,"  "sin  offering." 

(3)  Paraptoma^  defined  "fall,  offense,  trespass." 
The  first  of  these  words  is  used  but  few  times  and 


30  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

is  invariably  translated  "sin."  The  second  is  the 
current  New  Testament  word  for  sin,  and  is  gener- 
ally so  translated.  In  2  Cor.  xi.  7  it  is  rendered 
offense,  and  in  Heb.  x.  6  it  is  rendered  sacrifices 
for  sin. 

The  third  is  variously  rendered,  trespass,  offense, 
fault,  fall,  and  is  three  times  rendered  sin.  Eph. 
i.  7,  ii.  5,  Col.  ii.  13. 

(The  word  Parabasis,  and  its  corresponding  verb 
ParabainOy  have  a  kindred  signification,  and  are 
generally  translated  transgression  and  to  transgress, 
but  never  sin  and  to  sin.) 

4.  The  verb  usually  used  in  the  New  Testament 
to  express  the  doctrine  in  hand  is  hamartano. 
This  is  variously  defined,  to  miss  a  mark;  to  lose, 
be  disappointed;  to  go  astray;  deviate,  swerve;  to 
mistake,  err;  to  pass  by,  neglect,  omit;  to  sin, 
transgress,  offend.  In  the  New  Testament  this 
word  is  generally  rendered,  to  sin.  It  is  in  a  few 
instances  rendered  to  trespass,  and  to  offend. 

These  words  hamatia  and  ha^nartano  are  gener- 
ally used  in  the  Septuagint  in  translating  the 
Hebrew  words  of  the  Old  Testament.* 

From  those  terms  studied  in  the  various  connec- 
tions in  which  they  are  used  in  the  Holy  Scriptures 
we  are  to  learn  what  sin  is,  its  nature  and  charac- 
teristics. 

I.  The  forms  to  lose,  to  be  disappointed,  to  go 
astray,  to  swerve,  to  deviate,  to  mistake,  to  err,  to 

*  Note.  —For  an  elaborate  and  scholarly  discussion  of  these 
Greek  words  the  reader  is  referred  to  Dr.  R.  Beard's  Theology. 
Vol.  II.  Sec.  4  and  5 


SIN.  31 

neglect,  to  pass  by,  to  omit,  to  transgress,  to  oflfend, 
to  sin,  are  general  expressions  which  of  themselves 
do  not  tell  us  exactly  what  we  want  to  know. 
They  give  us  in  general  terms  the  predicates  or 
characteristics  of  the  thing,  rather  than  the  thing 
itself.  Something  more  specific  is  needed  to  enable 
us  to  see  exactly  what  sin  is.  This  desideratum  is 
given  in  the  definition  to  miss  the  mark;  as  an 
archer  shooting  at  a  mark  misses  it.  This  gives 
the  exact  thing  in  a  concrete  form,  easy  of  appre- 
hension, and  of  which  we  can  make  predications. 
Hence  we  can  properly  say  to  miss  the  mark  is  to 
lose  our  end,  to  miss  the  mark  is  to  be  disappointed 
in  our  expectations;  to  miss  the  mark  is  to  stray, 
swerve,  deviate  from  the  goal  aimed  at;  to  miss  the 
mark  is  to  mistake  the  false  for  the  true;  to  miss 
the  mark  is  to  omit  or  neglect  what  duty  and  inter- 
est require  ;  to  miss  the  mark  is  to  transgress  and 
offend  against  God  and  humanity ;  to  miss  the 
mark  is  to  do  any  and  all  these  things,  each  of 
which  is  sin  in  some  sense. 

2.  The  archer  in  shooting  has  a  mark  at  which 
he  aims,  an  end  which  he  purposes  to  accomplish. 
So  every  rational  being  has  an  end  at  which  he 
aims,  an  end  which  he  purposes  to  reach.  That 
end  is  good  at  least  to  himself,  if  to  no  others. 
This  is  the  motive  of  all  action;  it  underlies  all 
rational  activity.  But  every  sin  is  a  missing  of 
this  mark,  a  failure  to  accomplish  the  good 
intended,  and  a  failure  to  realize  the  ultimate  end 
of  action  and  of  life.  Hence  to  sin  is  to  bring 
injury  or  evil  upon  ourselves,  and  also  upon  others. 


32  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

No  man  liveth  to  himself.  Sinning  is  an  oflfense 
to  the  Father  of  our  spirits  because  it  is  a  misuse  of 
our  abilities,  and  an  abuse  of  the  freedom  that  he 
has  bestowed  upon  us  for  his  honor  and  our  good. 
As  sin  in  relation  to  God  is  insubordination,  in  re- 
lation to  ourselves  it  is  the  means  of  self-ruin.  All 
this  seems  to  be  involved  in  the  original  and 
proper  notion  of  sin. 

3.  The  Bible  says  (i  John  iii.  iv.):  'VSin  is  the 
transgression  of  the  law."  A  more  literal  and  a 
better  translation  is,  Sin  is  lawlessness.  Hamartia 
estin  anomia.  Of  course  every  act  of  transgression 
is  lawlessness,  but  every  lawless  act  is  not  literally 
a  transgression.  To  do  what  the  law  forbids  is  lit- 
eral transgression.  Not  to  do  what  it  commands  is 
not  transgression,  a  going  over  or  beyond,  but  a 
falling  short  of,  what  the  law  requires.  The  first 
is  a  sin  of  commission  ;  the  last  is  a  sin  of  omission. 
But  omission  and  commission  are  equally  acts  of 
lawlessness.  Some  critics  doubt  whether  John's 
word,  "  Sin  is  lawlessness,"  is  properly  a  definition 
of  sin.  Others  afiirm  that  it  is  a  definition.  The 
truth  seems  to  be  that  it  is  not  a  literal  definition 
of  sin  {hamartia)^  but  is  rather  an  abstract  charac- 
terization of  all  sin.  Lawlessness  is  properly  pred- 
icable  of  every  sin.  No  act  of  disobedience  to 
civil  law  is  defined  as  lawlessness,  but  every  such 
disobedience  is  an  act  of  lawlessness,  or  (changing 
abstract  into  the  concrete)  is  a  lawless  act 

The  Westminster  and  subsequent  Presbyterian 
catechisms  generally  describe  sin  as  any  want  of 
conformity  unto,    or  transgression  of  the   law   of 


S/N.  33 

God.  This  is  sufficiently  exact  for  practical  pur- 
poses, though  it  is  not  quite  logical. 

(i)  The  statement  is  ambiguous.  The  first  and  the 
last  part  may  be  taken  as  antithetical.  The  meaning 
then  would  be,  sin  is  either  any  want  of  conform- 
ity unto  or  a  transgression  of  the  law  of  God  ; 
dividing  all  sins  into  two  classes  ;  one  consisting 
in  a  want  of  conformity  unto  law  and  the  other  in 
transgression  of  the  law.  This  is  illogical  because 
transgression  is  as  really  a  want  of  conformity  unto 
law  as  any  other  sin  can  be.  Those  holding  this 
view  first  distinguish  between  '*  transgression  "  and 
*'want  of  conformity,"  while  by  the  terminology 
the  former  is  actually  included  in  the  latter.  The 
logical  distinction  is  given  by  the  terms  omission 
and  commission. 

(2)  The  last  part  of  the  statement  may  be  taken 
as  the  equivalent  of  the  first  part,  and  as  explana- 
tory of  it.  This  obliterates  the  difference  between 
transgression  and  other  sins,  and  is  of  course  illog- 
ical, making,  as  it  plainly  does,  a  part  (transgres- 
sion) equal  to  the  whole  sin,  (want  of  conformity 
unto)  which,  as  previously  stated,  includes  all  sin, 
or  making  a  species  equal  to  the  genus  of  which  it 
is  species.  Sin  is  lawlessness,  or  any  want  of  con- 
formity unto  the  law  of  God.  Both  omission  and 
commission  are  included  in  a  want  of  conformity. 
Lawlessness  is  the  genus  and  omission  and  commis- 
sion are  the  species.  This  is  logical  and  clear. 
Certainly  John,  when  he  said,  "  Sin  is  lawless- 
ness," or  "discrepancy  from  law,"  or  "want  of 
conformity  unto  law,"  did  not  mean  to  exclude  sins 


34  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

of  transgression  or  sins  of  any  kind.  He  rather 
meant  to  assert  what  is  necessarily  true  of  every 
sin,  viz. :  that  it  is  a  lawless  act  or  state. 

Section  II. — Sin  considered  as  lawlessness. — 
From  this  point  of  view  let  us  consider  sin  and  its 
logically  related  truths.  Lawlessness  presupposes 
two  things  ;  first,  a  law,  and  secondly,  an  act  or 
state  violative  of  the  law.  Obviously  there  can  be 
no  lawlessness  when  there  is  no  law,  nor  when 
there  is  no  act  or  state  violative  of  the  law.  Each 
of  these  points  requires  a  brief  notice. 

1.  What  is  the  law?  The  answer  is.  It  is  an  ex- 
pression or  revelation  of  the  will  of  the  law-maker 
in  whatever  manner  that  will  may  be  revealed  ; 
whether  as  a  verbal  or  written  revelation,  or  as  a 
law  written  upon  the  heart,  and  apprehensible  by 
the  intuitions  of  reason.  The  law  in  this  last  form 
is  common  to  all  men.     (Rom.  ii.  14,  15.) 

2.  This  law  is  the  law  of  God,  not  as  Creator 
merely,   but  as  the  Father  of  men. 

All  created  things  are  under  law,  under  divine 
law,  and  all  law  in  relation  to  material  and  irra- 
tional things  may  be  attributed  to  God  as  Creator 
merely.  Between  such  things  and  God  the  rela- 
tionship of  fatherhood  and  sonship  does  not  exist. 

We  never  say  God  is  the  Father  of  the  earth  or 
of  any  irrational  thing.  The  reason  for  not  doing 
this  is  that  they  do  not  bear  the  image  and  likeness 
of  God.  Men,  on  the  contrary,  are  made  in  the 
image  and  likeness  of  God,  and  for  this  reason  they 
are  the  children  of  God.     Like  produces  like,  not 


SI^r.  35 

in  creation  but  in  genus  and  progeny  only.  Adam 
begat  a  sou  in  his  own  likeness.  Cain  created  or 
built  a  city  but  not  in  his  own  likeness.  These 
facts  illustrate  the  difference  between  generation 
proper  and  mere  creation.  It  is  the  distinctive 
characteristic  of  generation  that  the  likeness  of  the 
parent  is  transmitted  to  the  progeny.  But  in  mere 
creation  there  is  no  transmission  of  such  likeness. 
To  be  made  in  the  image  and  likeness  of  God  con- 
stitutes sonship,  and  this  implies  fatherhood.  Hence 
Adam  was  truly  the  "son  of  God."  This  he  was 
because  God  gave  to  him  his  own  likeness,  thereby 
making  him  his  son,  and  diflferentiating  him  from 
all  other  things  pertaining  to  the  earth. 

It  is  true  men  have  a  physical  organism,  common 
with  other  animals,  and  as  such  may  be  regarded  as 
the  product  of  a  mere  creative  act.  But  this  act 
does  not  distinguish  from  other  animals,  nor  make 
them  the  children  of  God.  God  is  the  creator  of 
our  bodies,  but  the  "Father  of  our  spirits."  This 
distinction  between  creatorship  and  Fatherhood — 
between  creation  and  sonship — is  of  immense  im- 
portance in  the  sphere  of  morals  and  religion,  as 
we  may  see  in  due  time.  It  may  be  urged  as  an 
objection  to  this  view  that  the  scriptures  sometimes 
confound  creation  and  generation,  or  represent  the 
same  act  both  as  a  creation  and  a  generation,  that 
Christ  himself  is  called  the  beginning  of  the  crea- 
tion of  God — (Rev.  iii.  14  ;  Prov.  viii.  25,)  and  yet 
he  is  called  the  only  begotten  son  of  God  ;  that 
God  created  man  in  his  own  image,  and  yet  Adam 
was  called  the  ' '  son  of  God  ;' '  that  those  who  be- 


36  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

lieve  savingly  are  created  anew  in  Christ  Jesus,  yet 
that  those  who  believe  are  born  of  God  and  are  the 
sons  of  God. 

These  facts  teach  us  that  when  God  is  the  creator 
and  generator,  both  creation  and  generation  are 
predicated  of  what  seems  to  us  the  same  divine  act. 
This  is  true,  however,  only  of  God,  not  of  creatures; 
with  them  creation  and  generation  are  broadly  dis- 
tinguishable. Creation  and  generation  are  often 
predicable  of  the  same  thing.  What  the  plant  or 
animal  generates,  God  creates,  and  the  two  acts  are 
not  the  same.  Even  when  God  is  both  creator  and 
generator  there  is  necessarily  a  difference  between 
the  products  of  the  creative  and  the  generative  acts; 
otherwise  all  originated  things  would  sustain  to 
God  the  same  relation — all  things  would  be  sons  of 
God,  or  none  would  be  so.  It  is  a  self-evident  fact 
that  the  divine  act  which  produces  a  child  of  God 
is  a  different  act  in  kind  from  that  which  produces 
only  an  animal  or  a  plant.  This  diflference  may  be 
expressed  by  the  general  statement  that  all  acts 
that  transmit,  produce,  or  reproduce  the  divine 
likeness,  and  secure  sonship  are  generative  acts, 
and  hence  are  the  acts  of  Fatherhood,  and  not  of 
creatorship;  conversely,  that  all  divine  acts  that  do 
not  give  the  divine  likeness  to  the  things  thereby 
produced,  are  acts  of  creatorship  and  not  of  Father- 
hood. If  this  is  true  then  creatorship  and  Father- 
hood express  essentially  different  relations;  the 
same  is  true  of  creature  and  sonship,  and  the  terms 
creation  and  generation  are  not  strictly  convertible 
terms,  though  both  in  a  few  instances  are  applied 


S/N.  37 

to  what  to  us  seems  to  be  the  same  thing.  We 
know  that  generation,  both  in  the  sphere  of  the  di- 
vine and  the  human  always  gives  to  the  progeny 
the  likeness  of  the  progenitors.  This  gives  the  re- 
lation of  father  and  son.  We  know  equally  well 
that  creation  does  not  give  this  likeness,  and  con- 
sequently does  not  establish  the  relation  of  father 
and  son. 

It  may,  however,  be  true  that  all  divine  genera- 
tion is  accompanied  with  some  form  of  creation, 
though  all  creation  is  not  accompanied  with  gener- 
ation. If  this  is  so,  then  we  can  perceive  how  both 
creation  and  generation  can  be  affirmed  of  Christ, 
Adam  and  those  that  savingly  believe  in  Christ. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  apparent  enough  that  all 
that  bear  the  image  of  God  are  the  children  of  God, 
and  became  so  by  generation  rather  than  by  crea- 
tion. 

These  distinctions  may  at  first  seem  to  be  of  small 
value,  either  theoretically  or  practically.  Yet  with- 
out them  we  are  exceedingly  liable  to  form  inade- 
quate or  even  egregiously  false  conceptions  of  many 
grave  questions  of  both  theoretical  and  practical 
value;  such  as  divine  sovereignty,  the  divine  law, 
the  nature  of  sin,  and  other  related  subjects.  Some 
of  these  will  now  be  considered. 

Sec.  III.  —  The  Ground  of  Sovereignty. — Cer- 
tainly God  is  sovereign — supreme  and  absolutely 
sovereign.  To  deny  this  is  to  deny  the  divine  per- 
sonality and  reduce  the  deity  to  a  blind  and  purpose- 
less omnipotence. 


38  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

But  what  is  the  ground  of  this  sovereignty,  or 
what  gives  to  God  the  right  of  sovereignty?  I  an- 
swer negatively : 

1.  It  is  not  his  uncreatedness  nor  the  uncondi- 
tionedness  of  his  being,  nor  his  omnipotence,  nor 
his  wisdom,  nor  his  justice,  nor  his  benevolence, 
nor  any  one  or  all  of  his  attributes  combined.  The 
discriminating  mind,  upon  a  little  reflection,  cannot 
fail  to  see  that  no  one,  nor  all  these  attributes  com- 
bined, can  confer  sovereign  rights.  This  is  so  plain 
that  it  needs  only  to  be  stated  to  be  understood. 

2.  Sovereignty  does  not  have  its  ground  in  crea- 
torship;  or  the  fact  that  God  is  the  creator  of  all 
things  does  not  give  him  sovereign  prerogatives. 

I  am  not  unaware  of  the  fact  that  this  statement 
is  in  palpable  conflict  with  the  commonly  accepted 
opinion.  How  common,  or  rather  how  well-nigh 
universal,  is  it  to  say,  God  is  universal  creator  and 
therefore  universal  sovereign.  Truly  God  is  uni- 
versal creator  and  equally  is  it  that  he  is  universal 
sovereign.  But  he  is  not  sovereign  because  he  is 
creator. 

To  make  creatorship  the  source  of  sovereignty 
strongly  favors  the  miserable  maxim  that  might 
gives  or  makes  right.  It  also  favors,  if  it  does  not 
require,  the  belief  that  God  is  in  an  offensive  sense  a 
despotic  ruler  and  that  the  government  of  the  moral 
world  is  a  pure  absolutism  which  determines  human 
character  and  human  destiny  independently  of 
human  freedom.  It  thus  strongly  favors  the  pessi- 
mistic view  of  the  world,  and  leaves  thousands  of 
reflecting  minds  in  serious  doubt  as  to  whether  the 


Sin.  39 

supreme  Ruler  is  in  any  sense  the  Father  of  our 
race.  All  this  and  much  more  to  the  same  effect 
comes  legitimately  enough  out  of  the  false  notion 
that  sovereignty  is  a  prerogative  of  creatorship  or 
that  God  is  properly  sovereign  because  he  is  crea- 
tor. Hence  in  some  of  our  most  popular  schemes 
of  theology  the  Divine  Fatherhood  is  scarcely  ac- 
knowledged at  all.  Legitimate  sovereignty  is  dis- 
torted into  a  sort  of  selfish  aristocracy  which 
capriciously  pretermits  all  equitable  methods  of 
administration  and  distributes  favors  it  would  seem 
only  for  self-aggrandizing  purposes.  Other  more 
liberalized  schemes  of  theology  give  greater  prom- 
inence to  the  doctrine  of  universal  Fatherhood,  but 
make  it  subordinate  to  creatorship  and  account  God 
justly  sovereign  because  he  is  the  creator.  (Cer- 
tainly creatorship  has  its  rights,  but  sovereignty  in 
any  proper  sense  is  not  one  of  them.) 

Let  us  consider  a  few  facts. 

(i)  Creatorship,  of  course,  gives  a  property  right 
in  what  is  created,  but  these  property  rights  are 
not  identical  with  the  rights  of  sovereignty,  nor  are 
they  analogous  to  them.  The  mechanic  that  makes 
or  creates  a  house  has  a  valid  property  right  in  that 
house.  It  is  his  because  he  created  it  (did  not  orig- 
inate de  novo,  the  materials  but  constructed  them 
into  a  house).  He  is  at  liberty  to  dispose  of  it  at 
will,  to  change  it,  sell  it,  give  it  away,  or  destroy 
it.  The  man  also  has  a  right  in  his  children,  but 
this  is  a  very  diflferent  right  from  his  right  to  his 
house,  and  a  much  superior  one.  The  two  rights 
are  not  only  not  identical,  but  are  in  no  respect 


40  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

properly  analogous;  and  any  attempt  to  illustrate 
one  by  the  other  necessarily  leads  to  grievous  error 
in  that  it  degrades  our  divine  Father  to  a  property 
holder,  and  the  man  and  his  children  into  a  mere 
species  of  chattel.  The  two  rights,  both  valid,  rest 
on  grounds  wholly  independent  and  distinct.* 

This  difference  is  simply  the  difference  between 
the  rights  arising  respectively  out  of  creatorship 
and  Fatherhood.  Mere  creatorship  does  in  no 
instance  impart  likeness  to  what  is  created.  The 
house  is  not  like  the  man  that  made  it.  But  father- 
hood does  invariably  impart  or  reproduce  the 
father's  likeness,  and  for  this  reason  and  this  alone 
the  progeny  is  a  child  and  a  lawful  heir.  This 
impartation  of  likeness,  and  this  alone,  gives  to  the 
parent  the  right  to  require  of  the  child  reverence, 
love  and  obedience.  Creatorship,  of  itself,  gives  no 
such  right.  But  this  right  to  the  reverence,  love 
and  obedience  is  simply  the  right  of  sovereignty — is 
*in  fact  the  very  essence  of  sovereignty.  On  the 
contrary  the  rights  inherent  in  creatorship  are  in 
no  sense  those  of  sovereignty,  but  are  exclusively 
those  of  mere  propriety  or  ownership. 

No  man  would  seriously  say  that  the  mechanic 
has  sovereign  rights  in  the  house  or  over  the  house 
or  to  the  house  which  he  makes.  But  he  might 
very  pertinently  be  called  the  sovereign  over  his 
household  or  children.  Hence  sovereignty  is  a 
function  of  fatherhood  alone,  and  in  no  proper  sense 

*NoTB. — The  Father  has  a  natural  right  to  the  reverence,  love 
and  obedience  of  the  child,  at  least  'till  he  forfeits  this  right. 
But  he  has  no  right  to  sell  it. 


Sin.  41 

of  creatorship.  If  it  should  be  said  in  opposition  to 
this  view  that  the  Bible  does  not  discriminate  be- 
tween creatorship  and  fatherhood  ;  that  God 
formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground  ;  that  he 
created  man  in  His  own  image  ;  that  Adam  was  as 
truly  a  creature  of  God  as  he  was  the  son  of  God  ; 
that  men  are  often  spoken  of  as  creatures  as  well  as 
the  children  of  God,  and  that  God  is  represented 
both  as  our  Creator  and  Father.  This  is  all  read- 
ily admitted  in  its  full  force,  but  it  does  not  dis- 
prove the  difference  between  creation  and  genera- 
tion, or  between  the  relation  established  by  the  two 
acts.  It  is  too  plain  to  require  elaborate  argument 
that  the  act  which  produced  the  animals  and  the 
act  which  produced  Adam  in  the  image  of  God 
and  made  him  the  son  of  God  were  specifically  dif- 
ferent acts.  The  specific  difference  is  clearly  shown 
by  the  difference  in  their  respective  products,  the 
one  producing  mere  animals  and  the  other  trans- 
mitting the  divine  likeness  and  constituting  a  be- 
ing called  "the  Son  of  God."  All  that  have  the 
image  of  God  are  creatures,  but  all  creatures  do  not 
bear  the  image  of  God  ;  all  the  children  of  God  are 
creatures,  but  all  creatures  are  not  the  children  of 
of  God.  This  gives  the  relation  of  genus  and  spe- 
cies. The  generic  name  includes  the  specific  and 
is  often  used  for  it,  just  as  we  often  call  the  white 
oak  by  its  generic  name  oak.  This  sufficiently  ex- 
plains why  the  children  of  God  are  often  spoken  of 
as  the  creatures  of  God. 

The  earth  and  the  ox  are  creatures  but  not  chil- 
dren because  they  were  not  created  or   formed  in 


42  Anthropology. 

the  image  of  God.  Adam  was  a  creature  and  also 
a  son  because  he  was  created  in  the  image  of  God. 
Sonship  implies  fatherhood,  and  fatherhood  gives 
sovereignty.  God  is  not  the  sovereign  of  the  ox 
but  the  owner.  "The  cattle  upon  a  thousand  hills 
are  mine,"  but  he  is  the  sovereign  of  all  beings  that 
bear  hi  simage  because  He  is  the  Father  of  all  such. 

God,  as  Creator,  displays  his  being  and  his  eter- 
nal power  and  Godhead  in  the  physical  world. 
'*The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  and  the 
firmament  showeth  His  handiwork."  Over  the 
physical  world  God  rules,  not  as  sovereign  but  as  a 
pure,  necessitating  or  causal  power.  All  freedom 
and  moral  suasion  are  excluded. 

But  God  as  Father  rules  over  those  that  bear  his 
likeness,  over  his  children,  not  by  necessitating  or 
causal  force,  but  by  moral  suasion  or  by  motives 
addressed  to  beings  intelligent  and  free.  Hence  it 
is  not  creatorship  as  such,  but  fatherhood  alone 
that  gives  the  possibility  of  sovereignty  of  a  moral 
world  and  moral  government. 

(2)  Law. — As  we  have  seen,  fatherhood  alone 
gives  sovereignty.  In  like  manner  fatherhood  and 
sovereignty  alone  give  moral  law,  or  for  brevity  we 
may  say  sovereignty,  which  necessarily  implies 
fatherhood,  gives  law  or  is  the  law-making  power. 
This,  I  suppose,  will  be  universally  conceded. 

Creatorship  may  and  does  give  physical  law,  but 
not  moral.  If  it  did,  then  of  necessity  everything 
created  would  be  subjected  to  moral  law  which  no 
one  would  admit  to  be  true.  Physical  law  implies 
no  reason,  no  rational  intelligence,  no  freedom  in 


Sin,  43 

its  subjects.  It  consequently  excludes  the  possibil- 
ity of  moral  distinctions,  or  of  moral  retribution,  or 
rewards  and  punishment.  We  never  charge  physi- 
cal things  with  moral  wrong,  or  think  of  inflicting 
punishment,  or  of  bestowing  reward  upon  them.* 

But  the  reverse  of  all  this  is  true  of  moral  law. 
It  implies  reason  and  freedom  in  its  subjects,  and 
supposes  them  to  have  a  moral  sense  and  a  con- 
science, and  to  be  capable  of  moral  retribution. 
Only  because  men  have  the  image  of  God,  or  are 
the  children  of  God  are  they  the  subjects  of  such  a 
law  or  capable  of  its  award.  It  is  connate  with 
sonship,  and  co-extensive  with  the  paternal  relation, 
and  comes  necessarily  out  of  the  sovereignty  in- 
volved in  paternity,  and  can  come  from  no  other 
source.  (It  of  course  may  be  also  objectively  given 
as  it  is  to  us  in  revelation.) 

What  human  authority  except  that  of  the  parent, 
or  someone  acting  in  his  place,  has  the  right  to 
control  the  child  as  to  say  what  it  shall  eat  or  drink 
or  wear  or  do,  or  to  require  its  supreme  reverence, 
love,  or  obedience  ?  In  its  minority  the  will  of  the 
parents  is  the  supreme  law  of  human  authority 
over  it.  This  none  can  question.  But  why?  Only 
because  of  the  existing  parental  relation.  Because 
it  is  their  child,  bearing  their  image,  the  parents 
have  absolute  human  sovereignty  over  it,  and  the 

*The  little  boy  may  personify  his  toy  horse  and  deal 
with  it  as  if  it  were  capable  of  reason  and  feeling,  reward  and 
punishment.  But  this  is  all  imaginary,  not  real.  A.  man  may 
teach  his  horse  or  dog,  but  he  does  this  by  physical  suasion, 
or  other  means  than  moral  suasion,  or  appeals  to  no  moral 
sense. 


44  '      Anthropology. 

only  human  sovereignty  over  it.  (Of  course  the 
parent  in  the  exercise  of  this  supreme  human 
authority  is  bound  by  the  will  of  the  Supreme 
Father  of  all.) 

If  the  child  is  deprived  by  death  or  otherwise 
of  its  parents,  its  natural  sovereigns  and  protectors, 
and  some  other  person  takes  the  place  of  the 
parents,  such  persons  have  lawful  authority  over 
the  child  only  because  they  have  taken  the  parents' 
place.  In  every  conceivable  case  the  sovereign 
authority  rests  upon  parenthood. 

This  is  just  as  true  of  civil  or  state  sovereignty 
as  it  is  of  domestic  or  family  sovereignty.  Only  so 
far  as  the  State  fills  the  place  of  fatherhood  has  it 
any  sovereign  right  over  its  citizens  ;  for  all  civil, 
all  legal  authority  rests  on  ethical  ground,  and  that 
ethical  ground  is  fouOd  in  fatherhood  alone. 

All  human  rights  are  birthrights,  natural  or  God 
given  rights.  Civil  governments  do  not  give  them, 
and  cannot  without  usurpation  take  them  away  or 
abridge  them.  On  the  contrary  civil  governments 
are  only  the  agencies  established  by  the  people,  ei- 
ther formally  or  informally,  to  exercise  the  function 
of  the  common  fatherhood,  and  to  secure  to  every 
citizen  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  birthrights.  Hence 
the  ethical  relation  between  the  State  and  the  citi- 
zen is  strictly  the  relation  of  parent  and  child.* 

But  sovereignty  gives  law,  or  rather  the  sovereign 

♦The  rights  of  State  sovereignty,  when  reduced  to  their  ulti- 
mate ground,  have  absolutely  no  foundation  except  in  father- 
hood. AH  civil  authority  exercised  without  respect  to  this 
fact  is  a  sheer  usurpation.     Governments  should  not  be  per- 


S/N.  45' 

will  is  the  law  in  whatever  manner  it  may  be  ex- 
pressed, and  fatherhood  being  the  sole  ground  of 
sovereignty  is  of  course  the  source,  and  the  only 
source,  of  ethical  law,  which  is  the  only  valid 
ground  of  civil  law. 

The  divine  fatherhood  given,  what  should  we,  a 
priori^  believe  concerning  the  end  and  requirements 
of  the  divine  law?     I  reply  : 

I.  We  should  reasonably  expect  the  supreme  end 
of  the  law  to  be  the  good  of  those  that  bear  the  im- 
age of  the  Divine  Father,  and  whom  he  recognizes 
as  his  children.  So  reasonable  is  this  inference 
from  the  essential  nature  of  fatherhood,  that  we 
should  be  greatly  horrified  to  learn  that  the  reverse 
is  true;  for  this  would  set  divine  Fatherhood  in  the 
utmost  antagonism  to  all  human  parentage  and  to 
the  instincts  of  even  the  lower  animals  generally. 
We  know  that  human  parents  have  the  greatest  so- 
licitude and  make  the  greatest  sacrifices  for  the  wel- 
fare of  their  children.  The  supreme  end  of  the 
law  adopted  for  the  government  of  their  households 
is  the  good  of  their  children.  If  this  is  not  essen- 
tially true  of  the  divine  Fatherhood,  then  men  are 
not  like  their  heavenly  Father,  and  do  not  bear  his 
image;  God  actually  deceives  us  when  he  proclaims 
himself  our  Father  and  calls  us  his  children;  or  the 
Bible  becomes  a  riddle  and  not  a  revelation. 

It  is  known  that  the  view  of  law  here  maintained 
is  in  conflict  with  very  high  human  authorities. 

mitted  to  exist  for  their  own  eakes  or  for  the  spoils  and  emolu-    \^ 
ments  of  office,  for  in  so  far  as  they  do  this  they  pervert  the 
ends  of  their  own  existence. 


46  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

It  seems  to  be  a  favorite  opinion  of  many  great 
and  good  men  that  the  supreme  end  of  the  law  is 
the  good  or  glory  of  the  lawgiver  alone. 

Of  course  God  did  not  create  the  world  without 
a  motive  or  purpose,  and  his  desires  constitute  the 
rule  or  law  of  his  administration  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  his  purposes.  This  motive  or  purpose  we 
are  authoritatively  told  was  "for  the  glory  of  his 
sovereign  power  over  his  creatures."  This  purpose 
is  explicitly  stated  thus:  "  By  the  decree  of  God  for 
the  manifestation  of  his  glory,  some  men  and  angels 
are  predestinated  to  everlasting  life,  and  others  fore- 
ordained to  everlasting  death:"  or  the  motive  of 
God  in  creation  was  the  manifestation  of  "  the  glo- 
ry of  his  sovereign  power  over  his  creatures. ' '  The 
motive  of  the  election  decree  we  are  told  was 
"  the  praise  of  his  glorious  grace,"  and  the  motive 
of  his  decree  of  reprobation  was  "the  praise  of  his 
glorious  justice." — Westminster  Confession,  p.  3.* 


•It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  a  more  heartless  selfishness 
than  is  here  attributed  to  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  who  is  re- 
peatedly declared  to  be  "  love."  A  greater  incongruity  or  dis- 
tortion of  terms  than  is  here  displayed  "would  be  hard  to  find. 
To  create  immortal  spirits  and  decree  and  procure  tlieir  sin 
(ch.  6)  would  be  an  act  of  heartless  cruelty.  To  deliver  such 
from  their  helpless  misery  (not  guilt)  would  not  be  an  act  of 
grace  or  mercy  at  all,  but  only  a  poor  compensation  for  the 
prior  act  of  flagrant  injustice.  Again,  for  God  to  create  immor- 
tal spirits  and  decree  and  procure  their  sin,  and  then  for  the 
manifestation  of  the  "glory  of  his  sovereign  power  over  his 
creatures"  ordain  them  to  dishonor  and  wrath,  would  be  an 
act  of  injustice  and  cruelty  that  I  should  hesitate  to  attribute 
to  8atan  himself. 


S/N.  47 

From  this  scheme  of  sovereignty  divine  Father- 
hood is  quite  excluded.  It  makes  sovereignty  a 
function  of  creatorship  exclusively.  It  also  makes 
God's  sovereignty  over  his  creatures  (children)  iden- 
tical in  kind  with  man's  "dominion"  or  rule  over 
the  lower  auimals  (Gen.  i.  27)  except  that  man  has 
the  right  only  to  use,  not  abuse,  the  animals  under 
his  dominion;  while  to  God  is  attributed  the  sover- 
eign right  "for  the  glory  of  his  dominion  over  his 
creatures"  to  reprobate  his  own  children  prior  to 
their  existence  and  sin,  "  to  dishonor  and  wrath." 

Happily  for  the  future  of  Christianity  this  barba- 
rian philosophy  (not  theology)  which  for  centuries 
has  greatly  impeded  the  progress  of  Protestant 
Christianity,  now  finds  advocacy  only  in  a  few  able 
but  fossilized  pessimistic  philosophers. 

The  great  majority  of  those  that  have  received 
the  doctrine  by  inheritance  from  an  honorable  and 
pious  ancestry,  now  either  reject  the  doctrine  as  in- 
herently false,  or  wisely  deem  it  imprudent  to  preach 
it.  It  consequently  is  measurably  expelled  from 
the  pulpit,  and  measurably  suppressed  from  current 
religious  literature. 

This  change  of  opinion  and  practice  in  regard  to 
the  doctrine  requires  a  corresponding  change  as  to 
the  grounds  of  divine  sovereignty,  requires  the  rec- 
ognition of  Fatherhood  and  not  mere  creatorship, 
as  the  proper  and  only  true  ground. 

Just  in  proportion  to  the  recognition  and  appre- 
ciation of  this  glorious  truth — the  Fatherhood  of 
God — will  Christianity  be  freed  from  pessimistic 
hues  with  which  it  has  been  draped  by  a  cold  and 


48  ANTHROPOLOG  V. 

false  philosophy.  The  Fatherhood  of  God  fully 
recognized  as  the  source  of  sovereignty  and  law 
will,  without  doubt,  invest  our  holy  religion  with  a 
radiance  and  a  warmth  which  cannot  fail  to  com- 
mend it  with  far  greater  force,  both  to  the  reason 
and  affections  of  men. 

How  different  the  whole  mental  state  of  the  child 
when  standing  in  the  presence  of  one  recognized 
as  a  father  or  mother  from  that  state  experienced 
when  standing  in  the  presence  of  one  recognized  as 
a  stranger,  a  master,  a  tyrant !  How  much  more 
readily  and  cheerfully  does  the  child  obey  com- 
mands when  it  comes  to  know  that  they  are  imposed 
by  a  loving  father  for  its  own  good,  and  not  merely 
for  the  cold  selfish  ends  of  one  who  gives  the  com- 
mands as  ' '  for  the  glory  of  his  sovereign  power 
over  it. " 

It  is  well-nigh  a  self-evident  truth  that  any  theory 
of  divine  sovereignty  other  than  that  which  rests  on 
divine  Fatherhood,  while  it  may  awaken  a  slavish 
fear,  cannot  inspire  reverence,  love,  and  filial  obedi- 
ence. This  is  in  full  accord  with  the  Bible,  reason, 
and  human  experience.  Fatherhood  given,  we  readi- 
ly infer,  and  cannot  fail  to  infer,  that  the  paramount 
design  of  the  law  is  the  good  of  God's  household. 

2.  This  most  rational  conclusion  is  fully  sup- 
ported by  a  pos/eriort  arguments.  (  We  safely  infer 
the  design  of  a  thing  from  its  uniform  tendency.^ 
We  know  by  actual  experience  and  observation  that 
the  divine  law  is  conservative  of  good.  We  know 
that'obedience  to  law  insures  our  safety  ;  that  diso- 
bedience to  law  brings  only  evil.     This  conserva- 


S/N.  49 

tive  power  of  law  proves  its  design  to  be  our  good 
and  not  evil.  Certainly  there  is  no  ground  for 
doubt  on  this  subject.  If  the  animal  perils  its  life 
in  the  interest  of  its  young  ;  if  the  reason  and  in- 
stinct of  the  human  parent,  notwithstanding  his 
imperfections,  prompt  him  to  adopt  and  enforce 
rules  for  the  good  of  his  children  rather  than  to 
serve  his  own  selfish  ends,  how  abhorrent  to  reason 
is  it  to  suppose  that  our  divine  Father,  who  is  love 
and  in  whose  image  we  are,  should  impose  on  us  a 
law  whose  supreme  end  is  not  our  good,  but  to 
"display  the  glory  of  sovereign  power  over  (us)  his 
creatures. ' ' 

3.  The  nature  of  the  requirements  of  the  law  is 
easily  inferred  from  what  has  been  said. 

(i)  It  requires  nothing  except  our  good.  We  are 
so  constituted  that  our  well-being  is  conditioned 
upon  our  obedience  to  law  ;  and  every  man  is  the 
chief  beneficiary  of  his  own  obedience.  His  good 
deeds  affect  the  well-being  of  his  fellows — his  evil 
deeds  may  bring  evil  upon  others  ;  but  neither  his 
good  nor  bad  deeds  essentially  affect  the  well-being 
of  his  Maker.  He  would  be  as  truly  God,  pos- 
sessed of  infinite  self-sufficiency,  without  us  and  our 
imperfect  services  as  with  them.  When  we  rever- 
ence God,  love  God,  obey  God,  we  do  not  profit 
him,  but  ourselves  and  our  fellows.  He  requires 
nothing  of  us  because  he  is  in  any  way  dependent 
upon  us,  or  profited  by  us. 

When  we  do  right — love  and  obey  him — he  is 
pleased  with  us.  When  we  do  wrong — hate  and 
disobey  him — he  is  displeased  with  us. 


50  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Certainly  every  requisition  which  he  makes,  of  us 
is  prompted  solely  by  his  Fatherly  love,  his  desire 
for  our  good. 

Infinitely  self-sufficient  in  himself,  what  motive, 
other  than  the  good  of  his  children,  could  he  have 
for  requiring  anything  of  them? 

True,  he  sometimes  speaks  to  us  in  the  stern  tones 
of  authority.  But  when  he  does  so  he  is  no  less  our 
loving  Father  than  when  he  speaks  to  us  in  the  lan- 
guage of  persuasion  and  soft  entreaty.  When  the 
human  father  sternly,  even  angrily,  commands 
his  ignorant  or  thoughtless  child  to  keep  out  of  the 
fire,  where  danger  lurks,  he  loves  the  child  as  truly 
as  when  he  speaks  approvingly  or  complacently. 
In  fact  the  command,  however  stern,  is  itself  proof 
of  that  love.  So  when  our  divine  Father  speaks 
in  threatening  words,  it  is  but  the  stern  voice  of 
love  saying,  "  Do  thyself  no  harm. " 

It  is  also  true  that  he  visits  aggravated  and  per- 
sistent rebellion  against  his  Fatherly  authority  with 
justly  deserved  punishment — sometimes  extraordi- 
nary punishment. 

Although  he  is  our  Father,  his  sovereign  power 
over  us  is  not  restricted  as  is  the  power  of  human 
parentage.  As  the  Supreme  Father,  it  is  his  sever- 
eign  right  to  create  and  destroy,  to  kill  and  to  make 
alive,  and,  in  his  infinite  wisdom,  to  do  whatever 
he  sees  is  best  for  his  children,  and  none  may,  with- 
out blasphemy,  challenge  the  justice  or  wisdom  of 
his  ways.  We  may  be  startled,  appalled  at  the  fear- 
fulness  and  seeming  severity  of  his  visitations,  be- 
cause  we  do  not  understand  them — they  are  too 


SIN.  51 

high  for  our  comprehension — but  we  are  not  war- 
ranted in  impeaching  his  justice,  his  wisdom  or  his 
love  on  account  of  our  inability  to  understand  his 
purposes  and  the  means  he  employs  for  their  ac- 
complishment. 

The  finite  may  apprehend  but  cannot  compre- 
hend the  infinite.  What  to  our  very  limited  and 
.distorted  minds  may  seem  unjust  or  severely  cruel, 
may  be  in  fact  the  highest  display  of  Fatherly  love 
and  favor.  The  overthrow  of  the  Antedeluvians, 
the  Sodomites,  and  the  Canaanites  and  other  physi- 
cally and  morally  debauched  peoples  may  have  been, 
and  probably  was  greater  display  of  Fatherly  love 
than  the  deliverance  of  the  Hebrews  from  Egyptian 
cruelty.  Anger  and  love,  even  among  human- 
kind often  coexist  in  the  same  bosom.  God's 
acts  of  anger  (so  called)  doubtless  are  only  the  ex- 
pressions of  a  wisdom  and  love  too  high  for  our 
comprehension.  We  should  rejoice  in  the  convic- 
tion that  his  anger  never  obscures  his  wisdom  or 
contravenes  his  Fatherly  love  for  those  that  bear 
his  image.  If  he  chastens  or  afflicts  or  punishes, 
however  severely,  it  is  not  through  any  hatred  or 
animosity  or  to  gratify  any  malevolent  or  revenge- 
ful feeling,  but  solely  for  the  good  of  those  for 
whose  welfare  he  is  always  concerned;  "  but  though 
he  cause  grief,  yet  will  he  have  compassion  according 
to  the  multitude  of  his  mercies,  for  he  doth  not  afflict 
willingly  (or  from  the  heart),  nor  grieve  the  children 
of  men;  to  crush  under  his  feet  all  the  prisoners  of 
the  earth,  to  turn  aside  the  right  of  a  man  before 
the  face   of  the  Most  High."      (Lam.  iii.  32-35.) 


52  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Possibly  more  good  comes  to  men  out  of  what  we 
call  calamities  than  out  of  what  we  deem  good ;  or 
what  we  deem  the  evil  and  deem  the  gQod  are  so  in- 
terblended  in  the  manifold  providence  of  God,  that 
we  often,  no  doubt,  mistake  the  one  for  the  other. 

It  is  therefore  the  truest  philosophy  and  also  the 
highest  piety  to  submit  cheerfully  to  his  will,  even 
under  what  seems  a  calamity,  and  even  implicitly 
to  cast  our  care  upon  Him  who  above  all  others 
careth  for  us,  knowing  that  he  will  never  leave  us 
nor  forsake  us,  having  said  that  ' '  all  things  work 
together  for  the  good  of  them  that  love  God." 

We  have  every  assurance  of  the  fact  in  every 
condition  in  which  we  may  be  placed,  whether  in 
prosperity  or  adversity,  in  wealth  or  in  poverty,  in 
honor  or  dishonor,  in  health  or  affliction,  in  saint- 
hood or  in  sinhood,  God  is  still  our  Father,  loving 
us,  pitying  us,  rejoicing  with  the  pure  and  good, 
and  having  no  pleasure  in  the  death  of  the  wicked 
who  despite  his  Fatherly  warnings  and  entreaties, 
have  brought  ruin  upon  themselves. 

In  the  light  of  such  truths  as  here  indicated,  we 
are,  if  I  mistake  not,  better  prepared  to  apprehend 
the  end  of  the  divine  law  and  the  nature  of  its  re- 
quirements. Surely  we  can  truthfully  say  the  end 
of  the  law  is  good,  and  all  its  requirements  just 
such  and  only  such  as  the  infinite  wisdom  of 
the  All-loving  Father  sees  to  be  best  for  our  pres- 
ent and  endless  happiness. 

This  view  of  the  source,  end  and  nature  of  the 
law  enables  us  to  see  in  its  true  light  the  real  na- 
ture or  characteristics  of  sin. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
SIN  (continued). 

IN  the  light  of  the  above  truths  let  us  consider  sin 
in  some  of  its  aspects. 
I.  Sin  is  lawlessness,  insubordination,  rebellion, 
not  against  our  Creator,  as  such,  not  against  a 
heartless  autocrat  who  has  by  accident  or  otherwise 
obtained  unjust  power  over  us,  but  against  the  will 
and  rightful  authority  of  our  Supreme  Father  who 
stands  in  no  need  of  our  services,  and  requires  ab- 
solutely nothing  of  us  except  for  our  own  good  and 
the  good  of  others  than  himself.  ~~ 

This  lawlessness  is  the  climax  of  unreason. 

(i)  Because  it  is  necessarily  displeasing  to  our 
Father,  who  loves  us  as  no  others  can  love  us,  and 
whom  it  should  be  our  supreme  delight  to  rever- 
ence, love  and  obey;  or  whom  we  above  all  others 
should  seek  to  please.  What  child  commands  so  lit- 
•tle  sympathy  or  provokes  more  general  and  deeper 
aversion  than  such  as  persistently  defy  parental  au- 
thority and  despise  parental  favor?  If  sins  against 
human  parentage  are  justly  deemed  odious,  how 
much  more  odious  are  sins  against  a  heavenly 
Father,  who  has  given  us  our  earthly  parents  and 
all  other  blessings  ? 

(2)  Sin  is  the  essence  of  unreason  or  folly,  be- 
cause it  is  as  destructive  of  our  own  interest  as 
it  is  displeasing   or  offensive  to  God.     We  often 


54  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

think  and  even  speak  of  sin  as  if  it,  at  the  utmost, 
could  subject  us  only  to  some  objectiveriij^e  oT 
punishment,  such  as  may  be  inflicted  upon  amiefe 
brute,  as  an  ox  or  dog.  Because  of  this  low  and 
utterly  false  notion  of  sin,  many  hesitate  not  to  com- 
mit it,  hoping  that,  like  the  ox  or  dog,  they  may 
escape  punishment;  or  that  the  gratification  of  the 
sinful  desire  will  more  than  compensate  them  for 
the  punishment.  Thousands  deceive  and  ruin  them-" 
selves  by  these  and  similarly  fallacious  methods;  not 
recognizing  the  fearful  truth  that  every  sin  against 
their  divine  Father  is  equally  a  sin  against  them- 
selves. 

Our  mental  and  moral  well-being  is  as  truly 
conditioned  upon  our  obedience  to  law  as  is  our  phys- 
ical gopd.  In  neither  respect  can  we  transgress 
with  impunity.  The  transgression  of  hygienic  law 
brings  injury,  disease  or  death.  So  it  is  of  the  trans- 
gressions of  moral  law.  The  retributions  of  the  latter 
are  not  less  sure  and  generally  far  more  terrible  than 
the  former.  In  both  cases  the  transgressor  is 
a  sinner  against  himself  and  suffers  the  bitter  con- 
sequences of  his  lawlessness.  Sin  is  consequently 
of  all  unreasonable  things  the  most  unreasonable. 

2.  Sin  is  arrogance.  Our  heavenly  Father  tells 
us  for  our  own  good  what  to  do  and  what  not  to  do. 
But  we  arrogate  to  know  better  than  he  what  is  for 
our  good.  The  father  says  to  the  child:  You  must 
not  play  with  the  fire.  You  must  keep  out  of 
the  pond.  You  must  not  play  with  the  razor,  nor 
trifle  with  the  gun,  nor  eat  poisonous  berries,  etc. 
All  these  restrictions  are  made  in  love  and  for  the 


S/N.  55 

child's  good.  But  the  child  thinks  it  knows  better 
than  the  father  what  is  for  its  good — thinks  the 
father  does  not  want  it  to  be  happy — and  does  not 
hesitate  to  violate  these  and  all  other  parental  com- 
mands; and  injury,  disease  or  death  or  calamity  in 
some  form  is  the  result,  and  no  amount  of  unavail- 
ing regret  can  undo  the  evil  done. 

In  like  manner  our  divine  Father  tells  us  for  our 
good  what  we  must  do  and  what  we  must  not  do. 
But  we,  like  the  ignorant  and  self-willed  child,  ar- 
rogate to  know  better  than  our  Father  what  is  best 
for  us.     This  is  supreme  arrogance. 

3.  Sin  is  ingratitude  in  its  most  aggravated  form. 
Our  father  is  pre-eminently  the  Father  of  mercies, 
from  whom  comes  every  good  and  perfect  gift — 
from  whom  we  receive  being  itself  and  all  our  ca- 
pacities for  good  and  all  the  means  for  securing 
good.  We  receive  all  these  blessings  much  as  the 
irrational  animal  receives  its  food,  without  even 
in  the  slightest  manner  acknowledging  the  kind 
hand  that  bestows  them.  If  we  receive  these  in- 
numerable and  inestimable  favors  at  all,  we  often 
attribute  them,  not  to  their  prime  source,  our  mu- 
nificent and  2)rovident  Father,  but  to  that  blind  im- 
personal thing  called  nature,  or  to  chance  or  to  our- 
selves, or  to  some  other  than  the  true  source. 
These  inestimable  blessings  we  often  use  for  pur- 
poses in  utter  conflict  with  the  purposes  for  which 
our  heavenly  Father  confers  them.  This  not  only 
convicts  us  of  the  deepest  ingratitude  to  the  Giver 
of  all  good,  but  actually  converts  his  richest  bless- 
ings into  curses  to  ourselves. 


56  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

4.  Sin  is  a  perversion  or  misdirection  of  our  powers. 
Our  mental  powers  are  given  us  that  we  may  know 
God  and  our  relation  to  him,  and  also  know  the  means 
by  which  we  may  secure  to  ourselves  his  compla- 
cent love  and  all  the  blessings  temporal  and  spirit- 
ual that  he  has  in  store  for  us;  and  only  so  far  as 
our  intellects  and  all  our  mental  acquisitions  con- 
tribute to  this  end  are  they  of  any  use  to  us.  But 
instead  of  making  our  chief  concern  to  know  God 
and  his  character  and  will  as  revealed  in  ourselves 
and  in  external  nature,  in  his  providence  and  word, 
we  are  wont  to  shut  him  out  of  our  thoughts.  We 
do  not  like  to  retain  him  in  our  thoughts,  but  are 
much  inclined,  not  only  to  exclude  him  from  our 
hearts,  but  also  to  exclude  him  from  all  nature,  and 
attribute  his  great  and  marvelous  works  to  chance 
or  fate  or  some  nondescript  power  deified  as  the 
unknown  and  unknowable.  This  is  one  form  of 
the  perversion  of  our  Intel le'ctual  powers.  Another 
and  far  more  common  mode  of  perversion  consists 
in  directing  its  activities  to  the  device  of  means  for 
the  gratification  of  desires  and  the  accomplishment 
of  ends  as  dishonoring  to  God  as  they  are  delete- 
rious to  the  true  interests  of  men. 

All  our  mental  powers  are  given  us  only  for  the 
purpose  of  promoting  our  own  good  and  that  of 
others;  and  this  can  be  done  only  by  subordinating 
all  our  mental  activities  to  the  will  of  God  as  our 
supreme  rule  of  life. 

Our  ignorance  of  physical  or  moral  law  is  largely 
the  result  of  misdirected  mental  energy  and  from 
our  ignorance  of  God's  laws  in  the  physical  and 


S/N.  57 

moral  world,  or  their  willful  disregard  comes  the  far 
greater  part  of  the  misery,  unhappiness,  and  discon- 
tent with  which  the  world  abounds.  Men  by  their 
ignorant  or  willful  violation  of  hygienic  law  bring 
about  disease,  pestilence,  and  plague,  and  hesitate 
not  to  charge  their  afflictions  to  the  Ruler  of  the 
world. 

In  like  manner,  but  in  Christendom  with  a  much 
greater  degree  of  culpability,  we  by  our  ignorance 
or  willful  transgression  of  moral  law  produce  moral 
abnormalities  and  moral  pestilence  which  blight 
human  hopes  and  drown  souls  in  remediless  perdi- 
tion. Such  calamities  are  the  natural  result  of  the 
violations  of  the  beneficent  laws  upon  conformity 
to  which  our  heavenly  Father  has  conditioned  the 
physical  and  spiritual  well-being  of  the  world,  and 
are  not  properly,  as  is  often  asserted,  supernatural 
visitations  of  providence.  This  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  the  pestilence  stays  its  ravages  when  the 
proper  sanitary  conditions  are  restored,  ^and  the 
moral  malady  ceases  to  kill  when  the  soul  is  restored 
to  its  normal  state,  its  obedience  to  moral  law. 

It  is  the  sum  of  absurdities  to  violate  hygienic 
law  and  then  expect  to  enjoy  perfect  health ;  equal- 
ly so  to  violate  moral  law  and  yet  expect  to  be 
morally  healthy,  contented  or  happy.  A  virulent 
ulcer  on  the  body  is  a  hungry  canker-worm  that 
drinks  up  the  vital  energy  faster  than  nature  can 
supply  it;  so  sin  is  to  the  soul  an  ever-active  vora- 
cious canker-worm  which  turns  the  sweets  of  self- 
complacent  innocence  into  gall  and  creates  a  moral 
death. 


58  Anthropology, 

5.  Sin  is  ruinous  prodigality.  It  misuses  or 
abuses  or  perverts  the  bounties  of  heaven  into  evils. 
Our  divine  Father  has  bestowed  upon  his  children 
(all  are  his  offspring)  a  good  inheritance,  suited  to 
all  and  sufficient  for  all.  In  an  inventory  of  this 
common  patrimony  might  be  named  sunlight,  air, 
water,  and  the  varied  and  inexhaustible  treasures 
of  the  earth  which  are  adequate  to  supply  the  wants 
and  furnish  food,  raiment,  shelter  and  comfort  to 
hundreds  of  millions  more  than  now  exist.  He  al- 
so furnishes  to  every  people  brawn  and  brain  suffi- 
cient to  insure  food  and  raiment  and  comfort  to 
every  human  being.  There  is  absolutely  no  neces- 
sity of  nature  why  any  should  go  hungry,  or  starve, 
or  suffer  any  discomfort  from  the  want  of  those 
things  that  the  great  Father  has  conditioned  upon 
human  activity.  An  inestimable  part  of  this  divine 
patrimony  is  the  moral  faculty,  the  power  of  cog- 
nizing right  and  wrong,  our  duty  to  him  as  our 
common  Father  and  to  our  species  as  a  common 
brotherhood. 

True,  sin  has  greatly  enfeebled  this  moral  faculty 
so  as  to  render  it  an  imperfect  guide  in  morals  and 
in  religion.  Still,  it  exists  as  a  part  of  human  her- 
itage in  every  human  breast,  and  is  of  high  value 
in  enabling  every  man  to  be  a  law  unto  himself  and 
to  be  at  peace  with  himself 

All  the  facts  bearing  on  the  subject  show,  in  a 
satisfactory  way,  that  our  common  Father  has  made 
bountiful  provisions  for  all  the  physical  and  spirit- 
ual needs  of  his  own  household.  But  that  house- 
hold is  far  from  realizing  the  happiness  provided  for 


S/N.  59 

them  and  made  attainable  by  them.  The  world 
abounds  with  human  wretchedness  and  sore  dis- 
content. In  many  respects  it  seems  less  a  paradise 
than  a  pandemonium.  Human  wretchedness  in 
almost  every  conceivable  degree  and  form  largely 
abounds — wretchedness  from  poverty,  wretchedness 
from  physical  disease,  from  moral  pestilence,  from 
causeless  discontent,  from  fraternal  strife,  from  fam- 
ily broils,  from  incurable  animosities,  from  blighted 
hopes,  from  disappointed  ambition,  and  from  tor- 
menting fears,  from  unavailing  regrets,  and  from 
remorseful  consciences. 

Nearly  the  whole  of  this  unhappiness  is  directly 
or  indirectly  the  product  of  human  wills  and  human 
hands,  and  of  course  might  be  avoided.  Instead 
of  crediting  all  this  human  wretchedness  to  divine 
Providence  and  impeaching  the  wisdom  and  love 
of  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  we  should,  without 
ignoring  a  universal  providence,  rather  attribute  it 
to  human  laziness,  filthiness,  improvidence,  dissi- 
pation, sensuality,  cupidity,  lying,  cheating,  de- 
frauding, envy,  malice  and  ambition,  and  kindred 
causes,  all  of  which  are  but  other  names  for  sin. 
Sin  is  the  mighty  fountain  that  floods  the  world 
with  all  its  real  woes.  Of  course  it  is  not  meant 
that  every  man's  sins  aflfect  only  himself,  or  that 
every  man's  afflictions  and  calamities,  physical  and 
moral,  are  the  product  of  his  own  sins,  for  one 
man's  sins  may  bring  evils  upon  others  besides  him- 
self. 

The  actual  state  of  the  world  is  that  of  an  im- 
mense household,  the  greater  part  of  which  is  in 


6o  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

open  rebellion  against  supreme  parental  authority. 
All  are  desirous  of  the  same  thing  and  all  striving 
for  it,  viz :  happpiness,  but  each  one  seeking  it  in 
his  own  way,  each  making  his  own  will  the  supreme 
law  of  his  own  actions,  and  ignorantly  or  purposely 
violating  the  very  laws  upon  obedience  to  which 
parental  wisdom  and  love  have  conditioned  their 
happiness.  What  right  have  we  to  expect  happi- 
ness when  we  ignorantly  or  purposelessly  fail  to  do 
the  very  things  that  our  divine  Father  for  our  good 
has  commanded  us  to  do;  or  when  we  persistently 
refuse  to  do  what  he  requires  us  to  do  for  our  own 
safety  ?  Surely  none.  The  self-willed  child  that 
despises  parental  authority  and  defiantly  violates 
precepts  intended  for  its  good,  comes  naturally  to 
grief  and  shame  and  is  the  author  of  its  calamities, 
and  yet  thinks  its  fate  a  hard  one.  But  the  re- 
bellious household  not  only  fails  to  reverence,  love 
and  obey  its  beneficent  and  loving  Father,  but  in 
reckless  lawlessness  tramples  under  foot  the  com-, 
mon  rights  of  the  brotherhood.  Impelled  by  a  su- 
preme selfishness  each  seeks  the  accomplishment  of 
his  own  ends  largely,  perhaps  wholly,  regardless  of 
the  rights  and  interests  of  others,  and  thus  they 
bring  upon  one  another  innumerable  evils,  physi- 
cal and  moral.  A  large  percentage  of  the  hard 
earnings  of  mankind  is  required  to  support  the 
civil  government  and  the  world.  But  the  only 
reason  for  the  existence  of  the  government  is  to 
make  men  mind  their  own  business  and  let  other 
people  alone.  But  the  agents  of  these  governments 
are  more  or  less  ignorant   or  selfish,    either   not 


S/N.  6i 

knowing  how  to  accomplish  the  end  of  their  ap- 
pointment or  are  too  selfish  to  do  right.  Hence 
the  governments  themselves  can  claim,  even  the  best 
of  them,  to  be  nothing  more  than  necessary  evils. 
Their  necessity  arises  out  of  the  ignorance,  the 
moral  corruption,  and  selfishness  of  humanity. 
They  are  evil  because  they  are  as  ignorant,  mor- 
ally corrupt  and  selfish  as  those  they  attempt  to 
govern.  Ignorance  is  set  to  enlighten  ignorance; 
corruption  to  purify  corruption,  and  selfishness  to 
subdue  selfishness. 

Instead  of  an  obedient  and  harmonious  house- 
hold, each  loving  the  other  as  he  loves  himself,  as 
the  loving  Father  of  all  commands,  and  the  highest 
good  of  all  requires,  we  have  a  household  which 
is  a  quasi  pandemonium,  where  ignorance,  discord, 
envy,  jealousy,  hatred  and  every  possible  form  of 
selfishness  reign.  Human  misery  in  every  form  is  a 
natural  result  of  all  this  lawlessness.  Wherever 
lawlessness  abounds  misery  must  abound.  The 
latter  is  in  exact  proportion  to  the  former.  The 
world  can  never  be  relieved  from  these  evils,  phys- 
ical and  moral,  except  by  a  return  to  obedience  to 
the  divine  law. 

Let  men  come  to  love  God  supremely  and 
their  neighbors  as  themselves,  learn  to  love 
mercy  and  deal  justly  in  all  things,  to  do  unto 
others  as  they  would  have  others  do  unto  them, 
then  would  moral  evils  be  swept  from  our  world, 
and  our  physical  evils  be  mitigated  a  thousand-fold 
or  even  well-nigh  banished.  For  though  the  phys- 
ical and  the  moral  are  distinct,  yet  they  are  so  in- 


62  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

timately  connected  that  a  large  per  cent  of  our 
physical  evils  have  their  ultimate  source  in  the  in- 
fractions of  moral  law.  These  facts  are  verified  to 
a  limited  extent  in  cases  where  no  great  deteriora- 
tion is  inherited,  and  where  the  individual  lives 
mainly  obedient  to  the  requirements  of  both  hy- 
geinic  and  moral  law.  A  moral  world  without  the 
liabilities  of  sin  and  consequent  suffering  is  an  im- 
possible thing;  impossible  not  because  God  is  not 
omnipotent  and  wise  and  good,  but  because  mo- 
rality is  impossible  without  freedom,  and  freedom 
gives  to  all  newly  created  minds  the  possibility  and 
the  liability  to  sin.  Sin  as  sin  is  impossible  to 
created  minds  only  when  they  have  learned  tliat 
obedience  is  the  best  thing  possible,  and  when  they 
can  have  no  motive  or  desire  to  sin. 

This  brief  allusion  to  the  sources  whence  come 
nearly  the  sum  total  of  our  miseries,  physical  and 
moral,  is  sufficient  to  show  us  that  the  human 
race  is  the  author  of  its  own  miseries;  that  these 
miseries  form  no  necessary  part  of  the  divine 
plan,  that  they  are  simply  the  inevitable  conse- 
quences of  human  lawlessness  which  has  its  source 
in  supreme  selfishness.  True  it  is  we  are  ac- 
customed to  regard  many  things  as  evils  that  lie 
quite  beyond  control;  such  as  floods,  cyclones  and 
earthquakes.  It  is,  however,  probable  that  if  the 
world  of  mankind  were  living  in  full  accord  with 
the  will  of  our  beneficent  Father  and  were  free 
from  all  the  evils  brought  on  us  by  our  lawlessness, 
the  flood,  the  cyclone  and  the  earthquake,  and 
even  physical  death  itself  would  not  be  regarded  as 


SIN.  63 

evils  or  calamities  at  all.  We  may  very  well  pity 
those  that  bring  ruin  upon  themselves;  the  mur- 
derer, who  by  his  lawlessness  brings  himself  to  the 
scaflfold.  But  we  should  not  blame  the  law  under 
which  he  suffers  or  the  law-makers  whose  motives 
are  wise  and  good.  We  should  rather  blame  the 
lawlessness  that  brought  his  ruin. 

We  may  very  properly  pity  the  world  while  writh- 
ing in  its  physical  and  moral  agonies  produced  by 
its  own  lawlessness;  but  we  should  not  question  the 
wisdom  or  beneficence  of  the  law  whose  transgres- 
sions have  caused  these  agonies;  nor  the  love  of  the 
divine  Father  who  has  imposed  these  laws  for  our 
good. 

While  men  are  taught  to  regard  God  simply  as 
their  creator  who  has  a  right  to  their  obedience,  be- 
cause he  has  created  them,  will  they  be  inclined  to 
render  only  a  reluctant  obedi'ince.  So  long  as  men 
are  taught  that  his  object  in  their  creation  is  for  the 
glory  of  his  sovereign  power  over  his  creatures  will 
they  be  little  inclined  to  serve  him. 

So  long  as  they  are  taught  that  the  supreme  end 
of  his  law  is  a  vindication  of  his  rights  as  their 
creator  and  proprietor,  having  no  special  adaptation 
to  their  good,  so  long  will  men  find  it  hard  to  trust 
and  love  him.  They  may  fear  him  slavishly  and 
obey  him  cringingly  as  a  captive  his  captor,  or  a 
slave  his  master,  or  a  satrap  his  superior,  but  not 
otherwise. 

Not  until  men  recognize  God  as  their  Father  who 
loves  them,  protects  them,  pities  them  as  kind 
parents  pity  their  children,  do  they  truly  trust  him. 


64  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

reverence,  love  and  obey  him  with  a  cheerful,  happy 
delight.  We  all  know  that  the  predominant  ten- 
dency of  pulpit  performances  for  more  than  a  thou- 
sand years  has  been  to  make  conspicuously  promi- 
nent the  divine  creatorship  and  its  autocratic  pre- 
rogatives, and  to  leave  in  the  dark  background  the 
divine  Fatherhood. 

In  this  losing  sight  of  the  divine  Fatherhood  and 
making  prominent  the  divine  creatorship  and  gov- 
ernorship, the  attribute  of  divine  justice  has  been 
pressed  out  of  all  past  relations  in  that  it  has 
been  made  to  dominate  all  the  other  attributes,  thus 
making  it  incompatible  with  mercy,  and,  logically, 
(happily  only  logically)  making  God  himself  un- 
able to  pardon  without  first  punishing  his  ignorant 
and  erring  children  in  a  substitute. 

Surely  it  is  no  marvel  that  our  popular  Chris- 
tianity has  achieved  so  little  in  comparison  with 
what  its  friends  think  it  ought  to  have  accom- 
plished. Certainly  God  is  immutably  just,  is  never 
unjust.  But  this  is  not  incompatible  with  mercy. 
If  it  were,  pardon  would  be  forever  impossible. 
No  unjust  act  is  merciful,  and  no  unmerciful  act  is 
just.  Divine  justice  and  divine  mercy  are  simply 
obverse  aspects  of  the  same  divine  wisdom  and  love. 
This  view  of  justice  and  mercy  presents  a  brighter 
prospect  to  the  world,  being  in  full  harmony  with 
the  Fatherhood  of  God.  Happily  for  Christianity 
the  divine  Fatherhood  is  coming  into  greater  promi- 
nence in  the  pulpit  and  religious  literature  than  has 
been  accorded  for  centuries;  and  this  fact  is  prophet- 
ic of  greater  triumphs  of  the  cross  in  the  future. 


S/JV.  65 

Let  men  generally  come  to  recognize  God  as  their 
loving,  merciful  Father,  who  notwithstanding  their 
unnatural  rebellion,  pities  them  that  fear  him  as  a 
father  pitieth  his  children;  that  he  is  merciful  and 
gracious,  slow  to  anger  and  plenteous  in  mercy, 
that  all  he  requires  of  them  is  strictly  and  literally 
for  their  good;  that  he  doth  not  afflict  willingly, 
that  he  has  no  pleasure  in  the  death  of  the  wicked; 
that  their  punishments  are  the  inevitable  conse- 
quences of  their  own  sins;  that  if  they  suffer  pun- 
ishment now  and  hereafter  it  is  all  their  own  fault, 
and  not  from  any  necessity  imposed  upon  them  by 
a  natural  or  a  supernatural  providence;  let  men 
come  to  know  and  appreciate  these  facts  in  their 
true  light  and  as  sure  as  day  follows  night  men  will 
cease  to  regard  God  as  a  merciless  tyrant  instead  of 
a  loving  Father  who  could  not  create  men  simply 
to  damn  them  for  his  own  glory,  they  will  cease  to 
regard  themselves  as  the  hapless  and  helpless  vic- 
tims of  a  tyrant  that  afflicts  them  simply  for  the 
glory  of  his  sovereign  power  over  his  creatures. 

On  the  contrary,  recognizing  God  as  a  loving 
Father — as  their  Father  who  doth  not  afflict  wil- 
lingly, who  has  no  pleasure  in  the  death  of  the 
wicked,  who  is  willing  to  forgive  iniquity,  trans- 
gression and  sin,  who  is  anxious  to  receive  with 
open  arms  and  heart  the  returning  prodigal — men 
will  see  their  sins  in  a  light  they  never  saw  them 
before.  They  will  see  and  feel  their  ingratitude, 
folly  and  shame  as  never  before.  If  they  do  not 
repent  and  return  to  a  cheerful  obedience  to  their 
Father's  will,  they  will  at  least  cease  to  question 


66  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

his  love  and  to  charge  their  unhappiness  to  his  pur- 
poses concerning  them.  They  will  come  to  know 
there  is  immunity  from  evil  only  in  obedience  to 
law  or  God's  will.  This  is  equally  true  both  of 
physical  and  moral  law.  Hence  lawlessness  is  the 
means  by  which  we  bring  upon  ourselves  innumer- 
able physical  and  moral  evils,  and  obedience  to  law 
the  only  means  of  averting  evils  both  of  body  and 
mind.  The  remedy  for  moral  evils  is  found  in 
Soteriology,  or  the  science  of  salvation. 


CHAPTER  V. 

SIN,  TRANSGRESSION   AND   INIQUITV. 

(Continued.) 

THESE  terms  are  expressive  of  the  same  gen- 
eral idea,  either  of  lawless  acts  or  lawless  men- 
tal states  of  the  actors,   and  are  consequently 
interchangeably  used  in  the  Sacred  Scriptures.     The 
characteristics  of  one  of  these  terms  may  be  ac- 
cepted as  the  essential  characteristics  of  all  of  them. 

Sec.  I. — Sin  as  an  act. — Sin  is  of  two  essentially 
different  kinds. 

Voluntary  acts  of  disobedience  to  the  known  will 
or  law  of  God,  such  as  the  sin  of  the  first  man  in 
eating  the  forbidden  fruit,  the  treachery  of  Judas 
and  many  others  named  in  the  Bible.  This  is  the 
most  aggravated  form  of  sin,  and  subjects  the  per- 
petrator to  the  severest  penalties.  * '  He  that 
knoweth  his  master's  will  and  doeth  it  not  shall  be 
beaten  with  many  stripes." 

Voluntary  acts  in  violation  of  the  unknown  law 
or  will  of  God.  These  acts  constitute  what  are  recog- 
nized as  sins  of  ignorance.  Though  less  flagrant 
than  those  previously  named,  still  they  are  sins  and 
subject  those  that  commit  them  to  the  loss  of  that 
good  or  blessing  that  comes  from  obedience  to  law. 
Such  is  the  condition  of  those  that  know  not  the 
law.  (^uch  must  be  punished  morally  according  to 


68  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

their  knowledge  of  the  law.  This  is  a  fair  infer- 
ence from  the  parable  of  the  talents  and  other  Bible 
facts^  This  punishment,  I  suppose,  must  consist 
in  the  deprivation  of  good,  as  in  the  deprivation  of 
health  by  violation  cf  human  law,  rather  than  in 
the  infliction  of  positive  evil,  as  in  remorse  of  con- 
science and  a  sense  of  self-degradation. 

Sec.  II. — Sin  as  a  slate. — The  words  sin  and 
iniquity  are  in  the  Scriptures  often  used  to  express 
not  an  act  but  a  state  or  liabit  resulting  from  vol- 
untary action,  directly  or  indirectly.  We  know 
that  our  acts  of  perception,  also  our  acts  of  will, 
our  purposes  and  endeavors  produce  corresponding 
states  of  mind  or  bring  the  mind  into  different  re- 
lations to  the  objects  perceived,  or  purposed  or  done. 

In  accordance  with  this  universal  law  every  sin- 
ful act  is  followed  by  a  corresponding  sinful  state 
of  mind,  because  of  the  inseparable  relations  be- 
tween act  and  state  the  same  word  is  used  to  ex- 
press sometimes  the  act  and  sometimes  the  state. 
This  simple  state  is  never  produced  and  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  can  never  be  produced  except  by 
a  voluntary  act,  but  this  sinful  state  having  been 
thus  produced  by  the  voluntary  act  of  one  man  in 
himself  may  be  transmitted  ,to  his  progeny  by 
heredity,  just  as  any  other  physical  or  moral  quality 
may  be  transmitted.  This  fact  is  fully  avouched 
both  by  the  science  of  heredity  and  by  the  sacred 
Scriptures.  Hence  a  sinful  state  may  be  truthfully 
affirmed  of  children  that  have  committed  no  sin- 
ful act. 


S/N.  69 

2.  That  the  words  sin  and  iniquity  are  often  used  to 
express  a  state  and  not  an  act  might  be  proved  by 
scores  of  Bible  texts.  A  few  instances  of  such  use 
of  these  terms  will  be  sufficient  for  my  purpose. 

(i)   "Wash    me  thoroughly  from  mine  iniquity 
and  cleanse  me  from  my  sin,"     Psa,  H.2.     It  is  a 
common  characteristic  of  Hebrew  poetry  that  the 
same  idea  is  repeated  by  the  use  of  equivalent  terms. 
In  this  text  the  words  "  iniquity''''  and  '"''sin''''  mean 
the  same  thing,   so   do   the   words    ^^wask'*''    and, 
cleansey     Now  it  is  evident  from  mere  inspection 
that  the  words  "sin"  and  "iniquity"  here  mean  a 
state  and  not  an  act;  for  it  would  be  little  less  than 
nonsense  to  speak  of  cleansing  or  washing  an  act. 
Plainly  enough  it  is  the  actor  and  not  the  act  that! 
ueedsto  be  cleansed,  and  is  capable  of  being  cleansed  J 
or  washed. 

(2)  "I  was  shapen  (formed  or  brought  forth)  in 
iniquity,  and  in  sin  did  my  mother  conceive  me." 
Psa.  li.5.  Here  sin  and  iniquity  obviously  mean 
a  sinful  state  and  not  a  sinful  act;  otherwise  the 
text  would  teach  that  David  was  a  child  of  adultery 
or  that  all  conception  was  sin.  This  text  also 
teaches  with  sufficient  precision  and  force  that  child- 
ren are  born  in  a  depraved  or  sinful  state.  Three 
remarks  may  here  be  pertinently  made : 

First,  we  need  not  and  should  not  with  the  Cal-V 
vinist  predicate  of  infant  condemnation  or  liability 
to  punishment  simply  because  the  infant  is  born  in 
this  sinful  state;  (a)  Ijecause  in  its  irrational  state  it  is 
not  the  subject  of  moral  law  at  all ;  (b)  because  in  that 
it  is  not  liable  to  moral  retribution  at  all;  for  accord- 


70  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

ing  to  our  Cc  nfession  of  Faith,  dying  in  an  irra- 
tional state  it  is  "  regenerated  and  saved." 

Secondly,  we  need  not  and  should  not  with  some 
Armenians  predicate  of  the  infant  justification  and 
a  fitness  for  eternal  life;  (a)  because  as  previously 
said  it  is  not  the  subject  of  moral  law  and,  (b)  be- 
cause if  born  in  a  sinful  state,  it  is  not  in  a  state  of 
spiritual  life,  and  consequently  needs  to  be  put  into 
that  state  or  relieved  of  its  sinful  state. 

Thirdly,  when  reason  and  the  moral  sense  are  so 
far  developed  that  the  child  can  distinguish  between 
right  and  wrong,  it  comes  under  law  or  is  required 
to  love  God,  and  failing  to  do  this  necessarily  passes 
under  condemnation,  or  becomes  by  nature  a  child 
of  wrath  as  in  actual  transgression.  Possibly  child- 
ren under  highly  advantageous  circumstances  may 
come  to  love  Christ  and  actually  pass  from  a  state 
of  death  unto  life  before  they  are  capable  of  any 
distinct  sense  of  moral  accountability. 

(3)  "Therefore  as  through  one  man  (Adaui)  sin 
entered  into  the  world  (humanity),  and  death  (spirit- 
ual and  no  other)  through  sin;  and  so  death  passed 
unto  all  men  for  that  all  sinned."  Rom.  v.  12. 
This  text  through  ages  has  been  the  puzzle  of 
exegetes.  It  is  confessedly  difficult  and  much  of 
this  difficulty  arises,  I  think,  from  taking  the  word 
"sin"  as  expression  of  an  act  instead  of  the  con- 
sequence of  an  act;  or  as  the  expression  of  a  sinful 
act  instead  of  a  sinful  state,  as  it  is  often  taken  in 
other  texts.  This  is,  I  suspect,  the  chief  source  of 
difficulty. 

(a)  "  Sin  entered  into  the  world, ' '     There  is  some- 


SIN.  71 

thing  grotesque  and  solecistic  in  the  idea  of  sin  as 
an  act  entering  into  the  world  or  human  beings. 
It  is  unintelligible  and,  of  course,  inexplicable. 
On  the  contrary  the  words  "through  one  man  sin 
entered  into  the  world,"  if  we  take  the  word  "  sin" 
to  mean  a  sinful  state,  become  intelligible  and  capa- 
ble of  rational  explanation.  We  have  only  to  admit 
that  Adam  by  willful  disobedience  corrupted  his 
moral  nature,  and  then  by  generation  transmitted 
that  sinful  state  to  his  posterity.  This  view  with- 
out any  aid  from  realism  in  any  form  or  fiat  impu- 
tation gives  us  at  once  a  rational  and  scriptural  ac- 
count of  the  introduction  of  sin  into  humanity. 

(b)  "Death,  (entered  into  the  world,  humanity) 
by  or  through  sin. "  (Spiritual  death  alone  is  here 
intended  as  will  be  subsequently  shown.)  Sin  as  a 
willful  act  is  causative  of  sin  as  a  state  or  causative 
of  a  sinful  state,  and  sin  as  a  state  is  followed  by 
death  as  its  wages  or  natural  consequences;  just  as 
education,  as  an  act,  is  causative  of  education  as  a 
state,  and  education  as  a  state  of  the  mind  is  fol- 
lowed by  the  advantages  of  this  state,  or  as  a  crim- 
inal act  is  causative  of  a  criminal  state  which  is  fol- 
lowed by  penal  consequences. 

(c)  "And  so  death  passed  (over)  unto  all  men." 
The  word  passed  over  teaches  that  Adam's  spiritual 
death  is  transmitted,  of  course,  by  heredity  to  his 
posterity.  This  fact  condemns  both  realism  or  the 
idea  that  all  men  voluntarily  participated  in  the 
first  human  sin;  and  also  condemns  federal  imputa- 
tion; for  what  a  man  voluntarily  does  himself  does 
not  pass  over  to  him,  nor  is  it  imputed  to  him  or 


72  Anthropology. 

become  his  by  federal  representations,  but  it  is 
strictly  his  own  act  and  its  necessary  consequences 
are  the  products  of  his  own  act. 

(d)  ' '  So  that  (because  or  inasmuch  as)  all 
sinned."  Does  the  word  "sinned"  here  express 
an  act  or  a  state  resulting  from  an  act  ?  Some  say 
the  former,  and  some  the  latter.  All  actually  sinned 
in  a  previous  state  of  existence,  answers  the  pre^ 
existentist.  All  actually  sinned  in  Adam  answers 
the  realists.  No  one  actually  sinned  except  the  first 
man,  but  his  sin  was  imputed  to  all  his  posterity, 
answers  the  federal  imputationist.  The  pre-exist- 
entist  and  the  realist  make  the  word  "sinned  "  ex- 
press a  literal,  voluntary  act.  The  federalist  makes 
it  express  not  a  voluntary  act,  but  the  judicial  vis- 
itation of  Adam's  corruption  and  guilt  upon  his  pos- 
terity; i.  <?.,  all  are  accounted  and  treated  as  sin- 
ners, not  because  they  have  actually  sinned,  but 
because  Adam  as  their  federal  head  or  representa- 
tive actually  sinned.  The  federalist  is,  I  think, 
right  in  denying  that  the  word  sinned  in  this  case 
expresses  a  voluntary  act,  but  radically  wrong  in 
attributing  the  death  in  which  all  are  involved  to 
any  artificial  contrivance,  such  as  federal  headship, 
or  any  other  fiction.  Federal  headship  and  natural 
headship  cannot  be  co-causes  of  depravity.  If  a 
child  resembles  its  father  it  is  not  because  he  is  its 
legal  representative  and  protector,  but  because  he 
is  its  progenitor.  Federal  headship  is  just  as  in- 
competent to  account  for  human  depravity  as  is  pre- 
existentism  or  realism.  Natural  headship  or  pro- 
genitorship  only  can  give  an  intelligible  and  satis- 


SIN.  73 

factory  explanation  of  the    source  of    depravity. 

But  if  we  take  the  word  "sinned  "  in  this  text  to 
express  not  an  act,  but  a  state  resulting  from  an 
act,  then  we  must  take  it  in  a  metonymical  sense, 
or  put  the  cause  for  the  effect.  Are  we  just- 
ifiable in  doing  this?  I  think  we  are.  This 
figure  of  speech  is  often  used  in  the  scriptures. 
Paul  used  it  in  this  very  connection  (v.  14),  when 
he  said,  "Death  reigns  from  Adam  to  Moses."  As 
we  have  seen  from  v.  12,  sin  is  causative  of  death; 
and  in  v.  21,  it  is  said  that  "sin  hath  reigned  unto 
death."  Here  the  reign^  which  in  v.  21  is  at- 
tributed to  sin,  the  real  cause  of  death  is  in  v.  14, 
attributed  to  death;  that  is,  death,  the  effect,  is  put 
for  sin,  the  cause.  So  the  words  "all  sinned"  are 
by  metonymy  put  for  all  become  sinners^  or  subjects 
of  sinful  state  and,  for  this  reason,  the  victims  of 
spiritual  death,  the  consequences  of  this  sinful 
state. 

This  view,  I  think,  frees  the  subject  from  the  em- 
barrassment in  which  pre-existeutisni,  realism  and 
federalism  have  each  respectively  involved  it. 

It  releases  us  from  the  absurdity  of  believing  that 
men  lived  and  sinned  in  a  previous  state  of  which 
they  now  have  no  knowledge. 

It  releases  us  from  the  absurdity  of  saying  that 
men  lived  in  this  world  and  actually  sinned  volun- 
tarily thousands  of  years  before  they  were  born,  of 
which  events  they  now  have  no  knowledge. 

It  releases  us  from  the  absurdity  of  .attributing 
depravity  to  two  different  and  conflicting  causes; 
viz..  To  federal  headship  and  natural  headship.    It 


74  Anthropology. 

is  the  least  dilBcult  of  rational  explanation  and 
defense,  and  is  therefore  presumably  the  correct 
view  of  the  subject 


Sec.  III. — Sin  as  a  state  subjects  us  to  punish- 
ment.— The  preceding  discussion  of  sin  as  an  act 
and  sin  as  a  state  enables  us  the  better  to  under- 
stand the  real  ground  of  punishment  and  also  the 
nature  of  moral  retribution.  Men  are  punished  for 
their  sins.  This  is  a  uniform  teaching  of  the  Bible 
and  experience  confirms  the  fact. 

But  the  question  arises:  Are  they  punished  for 
their  acts  as  such  ?  or  for  their  mental  states 
whence  their  external  acts  proceed?  Most  persons, 
if  they  speak  without  reflection,  would  answer.  For 
their  acts.  Due  reflection,  however,  would  cause 
them  to  reverse  this  answer  and  say  that  subjects 
of  moral  law  are  rewarded  and  punished  for  their 
mental  states  and  not  for  their  external  acts.  It  is 
true  that  a  volition,  a'  mental  act,  primarily  de- 
termines the  mental  state.  But  it  is  the  mental 
state,  the  intention,  that  subjects  us  to  punishment. 
The  external  act  is  ordinarily  an  expression  of  in- 
tention and,  of  itself  or  apart  from  the  mental  state, 
has  no  moral  character. 

This  is  true  even  in  human  laws  concerning 
crime  and  is  pre-eminently  so  in  moral  law. 
Guiteau  was  not  hung  for  the  act  of  shooting  Gar- 
field, but  for  the  state  of  mind  with  which  he  did 
the  act.  Tfithad  been  proved  that  the  shooting 
was  accidental,  or  unintentional;  that  his  mind  was 


S/N.  75 

morally  right,  without  bad  feeling  or  evil  intention, 
he  would  not  have  been  hung. 

So  it  is  in  all  criminal  cases.  Men  are  punished 
for  what  they  are  rather  than  for  what  they  do,  or  y 
for  their  sinful  states  rather  than  their  external 
acts.  Because  of  the  difficulty  of  determining  the 
exact  state  of  the  mind  of  the  criminal  human 
tribunals,  no  doubt,  make  many  mistakes,  some- 
times awarding  greater  and  sometimes  less  punish- 
ment than  the  real  measure  of  guilt  requires. 

The  rule  holds  with  infallible  certainty  in  rela-  \ 
tion  to  morals.     Adam  became  a  criminal  at  heart, 
a  criminal  in  fact  when  he  formed  the  purpose  to 
eat  the  forbidden  fruit,  or  before  he  stretched  forth 
his  hand  to  take  it. 

The  external  acts  of  putting  forth  his  hand  and 
eating  the  fruit  were  mere  expressions  of  a  previously 
formed  purpose,  or  pre-existent  state  of  mind.     We 
call  the  external  act  sinful  not  because  it  was  in-       ] 
trinsically  so,  but  because  it  was  the  product  and        ' 
expression  of  a  prior  sinful  state  of  mind.     Having 
fully  formed  the  purpose  to  eat,  had  the  external       i 
act  of  eating   been    by   any    means   prevented,  he       / 
would  have  been  as  truly  a  sinner  as  the  man  that       [ 
hates  his  brother  is   a   murderer  though  he  never       I 
commits  the  external  act  of  killing.     In  both  these 
cases — in  fact   in   all    cases — it   is  sin   as   a  state      I 
rather  than  sin  as   an  act  that  subjects  to   moral 
retribution. 

Sec.  IV. — The   relatio7i  of  sin  and  its  punish- 
ment.— Sin  and  its  punishment  are  related  exactly 


^6  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

-^  as  an  act  and  its  natural  consequences,  as  cause  and 
eflfects.  The  punishment  comes  naturally  out  of 
the  sinful  state;  is  inseparable  from  it,  is  not  some- 

V^  thing  adventitious  or  abitrarily  added  to  it,  but  is 
its  own  natural  product,  Hence  "to  be  carnally 
minded  (in  a  sinful  state)  is  death."  The  wages 
(the  natural  or  divinely  established  consequences)  of 
sin  is  death.  (Rom.  vi.  23.)  "Whatsoever  a  man 
soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap.  He  that  soweth  to 
his  flesh  shall  of  the  flesh  also  reap  corruption; "  i.e. , 
destruction.  (Gal.  vi.  8.)  These  and  other  texts 
show  that  punishment  is  unseparable  from  sin  as  a 
state  of  the  mind  or  heart.  Not  more  surely  does 
pain  follow  a  diseased  state  of  the  body  than 
does  punishment  follow  a  sinful  state  of  the 
heart. 

Very  high  human  authority  says,  "There  is  no 
sin  so  small  but  it  deserves  damnation."  No  one 
ought  either  affirm  or  deny  this  proposition  with- 
out explanation  and  it  is  easier  to  make  a  new  state- 
ment than  to  satisfactorily  explain  the  old  one. 
The  Bible  never  so  states  the  relation  of  sin  and 
penalty;  never  says  sin  deserves  punishment,  or 
ought  to  be  punished,  or  merits  punishment.     It 

-^  rather  teaches  that  sins  or  sinners  are  ptatished^  or 
shall  he  punished^  or  that  sins  are  causative  of  pun- 
ishment, as  sickness  is  causative  of  suffering  or 
death.  No  one  would  say  that  sickness  ought  to  pro- 
duce pain,  or  deserves  pain.  This  would  be  equiva- 
lent to  saying  that  the  cause  ought  to  produce  its 
effects  or  deserves  its  effects.  We  do  not  properly 
predicate  deservednesss   or    oughtness    or    obliga- 


S/N.  77 

tion  or    liability  of  what  is  absolutely  necessary.     1^ 

It  is  only  when  we  conceive  that  men  are  pun- 
ished for  their  sinful  acts,  rather  than  for  their  sinful 
state,  and  that  the  punishment  is  objective  and  sep- 
arable from  the  sinful  state  that  we  talk  of  what 
penalties  sin  deserves,  or  ought  to  be  inflicted 
upon  sinners.  This  corruption  rests  upon  the  as- 
sumption of  an  analogy  between  human  and  divine 
law  which  does  not  exist  and  of  course  gives  a 
false  and  pernicious  notion  of  the  relations  of  sin 
and  its  punishment.  The  sinner,  at  least  in  his 
ordinary  state  of  mind,  not  being  conscious  that 
his  sin  "  deserves  (external)  damnation,"  very  nat- 
urally comes  to  regard  God,  not  as  his  Father  loving 
and  merciful,  but  as  unmerciful  and  perhaps  as  un- 
just, and  is  consequently  repelled  rather  than 
drawn  to  him.  On  the  contrary,  if  the  sinner  is 
made  to  know  that  God  is  his  loving  Father,  more 
willing  to  forgive  than  he  is  to  be  forgiven,  and 
that  the  penalties  to  which  his  sin  subjects  him  are 
the  natural  and  subjective  consequences  of  his  own 
sinful  state,  he  will  be  more  likely  to  cease  his  re- 
proaches against  the  goodness  of  God  and  turn 
against  himself  as  the  guilty  cause  of  his  own 
wretchedness. 

Let  the  sinner  be  made  to  know  that  the  state  of 
his  own  mind  and  heart  determines  the  nature  and 
severity  of  his  punishment  and  that  so  long  as  he 
continues  in  his  state  of  enmity  to  God  and  insub- 
ordination to  his  will  he  must  suffer,  he  will  be 
more  inclined  to  take  heed  to  his  ways  and  leave 
off  his  sins. 


78  .  ANTfJROPOLOGY. 

Sec.  V. — Sin  and  its  pardon.  — If  the  above  ex- 
pressed views  of  the  relation  of  sin  and  its  penal- 
ties are  true,  then  we  cannot  fail  to  see  the  unreason- 
.  ableness  of  all  theological  schemes  that  proceed  on 
_y  the  assumption  that  sin  and  its  penalties  are  sep- 
arable one  from  the  other — absolutely  capable  of 
such  complete  separation  that  one  man  may  be  the 
criminal  and  the  other  man  bear  the  punishment; 
or  as  it  is  sometimes  expressed,  one  may  bear  the 
reatus  cuipcE  and  another  man  bear  the  reatus 
,poencB;  and  that  the  punishment  of  any  sin,  or  all 
sin,  may  be  borne  by  one  person  thousands  of  years 
before  it  is  committed  by  the  other  party. 

According   to  the  advocates  of  this  theory  the 
y       punishment  of  sin  is  purely  objective,  as  really  so 
as  is  the  punishment  of  a  thief  who  receives  "  forty 
stripes  save  one,"  or  the  punishment  of  an  ox. 

The  advocates  of  this  scheme  themselves  admit 
(at  least  those  that  know  anything  about  it)  that  if 
the  punishment  of  sin  is  subjective,  then  it  is  im- 
possible for  one  person  to  bear  the  criminality  and 
another  the  penalty. 

Now  I  wish  in  this  connection  only  to  say  that 
this  method  of  pardon  is  not  only  unreasonable  but 
is  equally  unscriptural.  According  to  the  scheme 
Christ  actually  suffered  the  punishment  proper  to 
V^  all  for  whom  he  died  and  by  consequence  released 
all  such  from  all  penalty.  But  the  Bible  tells  us 
that  this  is  not  true,  that  the  wrath  of  God  abideth 
upon  unbelievers,  and  such  are  condemned  al- 
ready. 

Again,  the  scriptures  nowhere  teach  that  Christ 


SIN.  79 

came  to  bear,  or  that  he  did  bear,  or  take  away  or 
blot  out  the  penalties  of  sin. 

On  the  contrary  the  scriptures  teach  in  the  most 
explicit  manner  that  he  came  to  put  away  sin,  not 
its  penalties,  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself;  that  he 
bore  our  sins  (not  our  penalties)  in  his  own  body 
on  the  tree;  that  it  is  our  sins  and  not  their  penal-  ^^  ' 
ties,  that  are  blotted  out^  remitted^  forgiven^  par- 
doned. Of  what  use  would  it  be,  were  such  a 
thing  possible,  to  take  away  the  penalty  and  to 
leave  the  sin  that  caused  it  intact?  Or  to  take  the 
effect  and  leave  the  cause  in  full  vigor  ?  The  phy- 
sician in  treating  his  patient  does  not  deal  with  the 
pain,  but  with  the  disease  that  causes  it.  In  like 
manner  Christ,  the  great  physician,  in  his  visible 
ministry  did  not  deal  with  the  suffering,  physical 
and  mental,  of  men  but  with  their  disease,  taking 
away,  blotting  out,  forgiving  their  sins  or  chang- 
ing their  physical  and  mental  states  to  a  normal 
from  the  abnormal  states  in  which  their  sufferings 
had  their  origin.  He  did  not  take  away  the  suf- 
ferings of  Peter's  wife's  mother  and  leave  the  fever 
in  her;  or  relieve  the  demoniac  of  his  sufferings 
and  leave  the  legion  of  devils  in  him.  When  he 
said,  "Son,  be  of  good  cheer;  thy  sins  be  forgiven 
thee,"  he  did  not  take  away  the  punishment  of 
pain  and  leave  the  sins  unmolested,  but  relieved 
the  paralytic  of  the  sins  which  cause  his  sufferings. 
Never  did  he  deal  with  the  penalties  of  sin  as  some- 
thing separate  from  sins  themselves.  Never  did  he 
take  away  the  punishment  except  by  taking  away 
the  sins  which  produced   them.     In  this   respect 


8o  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

physical   and   moral   laws   are  strictly   analagous. 

Such  facts  show  us  exactly  what  is  meant  by  blot- 
ting out,  remitting,  forgiving  and  pardoning  sins, 
iniquities  and  transgression,  viz :  It  is  not  to  take 
away  or  relieve  us  of  punishment  or  liability  to 
^  punishment,  but  io  free  us^  deliver  us^  save  us  from 
the  sinful  state  which  produces  this  punishment. 

In  view  of  such  facts  how  inexpressibly  abhor- 
rent to  reason  and  to  revelation  is  the  doctrine  that 
Christ  bore  the  guilt  and  punishment  of  sin — the 
sins  of  all  or  of  a  part  of  mankind,  but  left  the  sins 
themselves  undisturbed  ?  Or  that  he  by  a  substi- 
tutionary and  penal  death  took  away  our  reatus 
poenae^  but  did  not  and  could  not  in  that  manner 
take  away  our  reatus  culpae  or  sinful  state?  If 
this  doctrine  was  true  it  would  exempt  all  for  whom 
Christ  died  from  all  the  natural  punishments  both 
in  this  life  and  in  the  life  to  come,  as  truly  so  as 
would  the  payment  of  a  debt  by  a  substitute  exempt 
the  principal  from  obligation  to  pay  it,  for  there 
would  be  no  debt  to  pay. 

A  governor  invested  with  pardoning  power  may 
release  a  convict  from  the  penalty  awarded  him  by 
the  court.  Substitutionists  sometimes  deceive 
themselves  by  thoughtlessly  assuming  the  penalties 
of  moral  law  to  be  analagous  to  those  of  the  civil 
v/  law,  and  that  as  the  governor  sets  aside  civil  penal- 
ties without  any  actual  change  in  the  state  of  the 
convict's  mind,  so  Christ  could  and  did  set  aside  the 
penalties  of  those  for  whom  he  suffered  without 
any  antecedent  change  of  their  sinful  state. 

But  it  should  be  carefully  noted  that  there  is  no 


S/N.  8i 

analogy  between  civil  and  divine  law  in  this  respect. 
The  civil  law  is  not  written  on  the  heart — is  not  a 
connection  of  the  mind  itself.  The  moral  is  so 
written. 

The  penalties  of  civil  law  are  purely  objective 
and  are  for  this  reason  separable  from  the  mental 
states  of  the  criminal.  The  penalties  of  the  moral 
law  are  subjective  and  are  consequently  inseparable 
from  the  actual  state  of  the  transgressor.  Hence 
no  one  can  take  my  punishments  without  taking 
the  actual  state  of  my  mind,  my  criminality,  my 
sense  of  guilt  and  my  conscience.  Nor  can  I  pos- 
sibly be  delivered  from  my  punishment  except  by 
antecedent  change  of  mind  and  heart.  This  need- 
ful change  is  identical  with  pardon,  remission,  for- 
giveness of  sin.  It  is  represented  in  the  Bible  as  a 
washing,  a  cleansing,  a  healing,  a  renewal,  a  regen- 
erating, a,  creating  anew,  a  purging  of  the  con- 
science from  dead  works  to  serve  the  living  God. 

This  presentation  of  the  divine  law  and  its  rea- 
sonable requirements;  of  sin,  penalty  and  pardon, 
which  is  here  but  imperfectly  given,  is  not  only  in 
harmony  with  our  Confession  of  Faith,  but  is  in 
part,  in  every  essential  point,  the  only  explanation, 
of  which  it  logically  admits.  See  Con.  Faith,  sec- 
tions 66-70. 

Parenthetically  it  may  be  stated  as  a  fact  of  some 
interest  that,  so  far  as  I  know,  our  New  Confession 
of  Faith  is  the  first  doctrinal  symbol  that  formally 
declares  a  difference  between  the  ordinar}'^  and 
natural  punishments  of  sin  and  judicial  and  extra- 
ordinary punishments,   making  the  former  subjec- 


82  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

tive  and  the  latter  objective.  The  seventieth  (70) 
section  is  in  these  words  :  ' '  The  penalties  of  this 
law  are  the  natural  and  subjective  consequences  of 
transgression,  and  unless  set  aside  by  the  provisions 
of  the  gospel  must  of  necessity  be  eternal;  and 
such  they  are  declared  to  be  by  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
These  moral  retributions  must  be  distinguished 
from  judicial  punishment  which  are  arbitrary,  ob- 
jective and  temporary,  and  are  always  inflicted  as 
occasion  may  require  for  administrative  purposes." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    RELATION    OF  SIN  TO    NATURAL  OR   PHYSIC- 
AL EVIL. 

Sec.  I. — Does  sin  sustain  a  causal  relation  to  all 
evil^  physical  as  well  as  moral? 

BY  many  it  has  been  and  is  yet  so  regarded.    But 
there  are  evidently  many  things  properly  re- 
garded as  evils  or  calamities  that  have  no  de- 
pendence upon  sin.     These  may  be  classified  as  fol- 
lows: 

(i)  Evils  resulting  from  the  operation  of  physical 
forces  in  the  inorganic  zuorld.  While  these  forces  are, 
on  the  whole,  highly  beneficial  and  no  doubt  neces- 
sary to  the  well-being  of  both  the  physical  and 
moral  world,  they  nevertheless  are  often  destructive 
to  human  life  and  happiness.  Through  the  opera- 
tion of  these  forces  of  nature,  under  a  divine  superin- 
tendence, the  world  has  always  been  subjected  to 
rains,  winds,  floods  and  volcanic  actions,  earth- 
quakes, excessive  heat  and  cold,  etc.  By  these 
agencies  of  nature  millions  of  valuable  property 
have  been  lost,  millions  of  valuable  lives  destroyed, 
millions  of  fond  hopes  blighted,  and  whole  com- 
munities and  States  filled  with  anguish  and  woe. 
That  these  forces  and  human  sin  have  no  causal 
connection  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  they  exist- 
ed according  to  the  revelations  of  geology  unnum- 


84  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

bered  ages  prior  to  the  man-period  of  the  earth's 
history.  Sin,  from  its  inherent  nature,  has  no  more 
power  to  produce  them  than  they  have  to  produce 
sin.  They  are  the  forces  God  has  ordained  for  the 
conservation  of  the  physical  world,  and  though 
they  existed  and  operated  long  anterior  to  man,  yet 
if  God  chose  to  use  them  for  purposes  of  moral  ad- 
ministration, as  we  know  he  sometimes  does,  this 
does  not  imply  that  they  have  any  dependency  up- 
on moral  evil,  or  moral  evil  upon  them.  Or  if  the 
earth  had  been  intended  for  habitation  by  a  race  of 
beings  no  higher  in  the  scale  of  being  than  beasts 
and  birds,  these  same  forces  would  have  existed, 
just  as  they  now  do,  and  the  same  results  would 
have  followed,  so  far  as  these  inferior  creatures  are 
concerned,  that  now  occur. 

(2)  Evils  restilHng  from  the  operation  of  the  laws 
of  vegetable  life  and  death. 

The  world,  for  various  reasons,  could  not  exist 
without  the  flora  or  vegetable  kingdom.  Both  man 
and  animal  without  vegetables  would  certainly  per- 
ish with  hunger.  Their  effects  on  man  and  beasts 
are  in  many  ways  highly  beneficent ;  yet  various 
evils  often  come  from  this  beneficent  provision  of 
nature.  Vegetation  powerfully  modifies  the  tem- 
perature, hence  the  prevailing  of  heat  and  cold. 
Its  decay  often  generates  bad  air,  miasmatic  poisons, 
and  brings  on  terrible  epidemics,  and  epizootics, 
destructive  to  men  and  beasts.  These  epidemics 
that  destroy  men  and  beasts  by  the  thousand,  are 
esteemed  great  evils,  but  the  natural  forces  that 
produce  them  existed  and  operated  no  doubt  on  the 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  85 

animal  kingdom  long  before  man  existed  at  all,  and 
hence  can  sustain  no  causal  relation  to  sin.  If  God 
in  his  providence  chose  to  use  such  instru- 
mentalities for  administrative  purposes  in  the  mor- 
al world  as  he  doubtless  does,  he  of  course  is  at 
liberty  to  do  so  and  then  bring  moral  good  out  of 
physical  evil. 

(3)  Evils  resulting  from  the  laws  of  instincts  of 
the  animal  creation. 

The  design  of  these  laws  is  the  conservation  and 
perpetuation  of  animal  life,  and  their  general  ten- 
dency is  beneficial,  whether  we  consider  the  animals 
themselves  or  the  human  race,  as  the  objects  of  be- 
neficence. But  from  this  source  of  benefactions 
evils  often  result,  both  to  animals  and  to  men. 
Some  of  these  animals  are  strictly  herbivorous, 
others  are  carnivorous,  and  others  are  called  om- 
nivorous. Now  while  the  animal  creation  seems 
indispensable  to  man  there  are  two  classes  of  evils 
incident  to  man  from  this  source.  First,  human 
food  and  clothing  are  largely  derived  from  animals. 
The  domestic  animals  have  become  property  in  all 
ages,  and  have  constituted  a  large  part  of  the  food 
and  property  of  man.  But  these  have  always  been 
the  coveted  prey  of  the  more  powerful  carnivor- 
ous tribes,  and  consequently  great  losses  in  property 
are  sustained  from  this  source.  Hence,  in  all  new- 
ly-settled countries  one  of  the  first  public  necessi- 
ties is  to  free  the  country  from  the  natural  enemies 
to  man's  secular  good.  The  extermination  of  these 
vicious  beasts  seems  to  have  formed  a  large  part  of 
the  exploits  of  the  fabulous  Hercules. 


86  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Samson,  too,  was  a  laborer  in  this  department  of 
philanthropy.  David  had  adventures  with  a  lion 
and  a  bear.  Now  the  economy  of  the  animal  world 
was  established  long  prior  to  the  creation  of  man, 
and  it  is  certainly  a  fair  inference  that  if  the  human 
race  had  become  numerous  without  having  sinned 
this  evil  would  have  existed  as  it  does  now.  That 
is,  the  wolf  nor  the  lion  would  no  more  respect 
the  lamb  or  the  kid  of  a  righteous  man  than  of  a 
sinner.  A  second  evil  from  this  source  is  man's 
liability  to  lose  his  life  as  well  as  his  property. 
This  is  so  now,  and  we  have  no  reasonable  ground 
to  suppose  it  would  be  otherwise  if  man  had  never 
sinned.  On  the  contrary  hypothesis  we  have  to 
suppose  that  the  creator  changed  the  nature  of  the 
instincts,  and  also  the  mechanical  structure  of  the 
animal  world,  on  account  of  Adam's  sin.  But  this 
would  be  an  assumption  as  ridiculous  as  incredible. 
In  fine,  to  answer  on  this  point  that  Adam's  sin 
and  all  natural  evil  are  causally  connected,  is  to  as- 
sume that  in  consequence  of  that  sin  the  creator 
has  materially  changed  the  whole  course  of  nature 
in  organized  matter  ;  in  the  vegetable  and  in  the 
animal  creation,  or  else  to  suppose  that  God,  in 
case  of  man's  perpetual  obedience,  would  have 
wrought  a  perpetual  miracle  in  defending  him  from 
the  numerous  evils  to  which  he  would  have  been 
subjected  from  these  sources.  But  we  have  no  right 
to  assume  any  such  miracle  for  such  a  purpose,  for 
it  is  abundantly  demonstrated  that  man  was  never 
an  object  of  deeper  solicitude  and  greater  providen- 
tial care  before  his  fall  than  he  has  been  since.    Yet 


Sin  and  Physical  Evil.  87 

we  know  that  all  these  evils  do  now  come  upon 
him,  hence  the  inference  that  they  would  have  come 
upon  him  if  he  had  never  sinned. 

But  there  are  possible  evils  arising  from  a  want 
of  food,  raiment,  etc.  Suppose  sin  had  not  entered 
the  world,  and  the  rates  of  increase  of  the  sinless 
race  had  been  equal  to  what  it  has  actually  been, 
then  there  is  a  strong  presumption  amounting  al- 
most to  certainty  that  suffering  in  some  cases  would 
have  resulted  on  the  score  of  physical  discomfort. 
The  hypothesis  that  there  would  have  been  no 
deaths  but  for  sin  increases  this  presumption  an 
hundredfold.  Even  according  to  the  chronology 
about  two  hundred  generations  have  passed  away. 
Suppose  the  average  population  of  these  genera- 
tions to  have  been  only  half  of  the  present  popula- 
tion of  the  globe  the  number  of  its  dead  would  be 
one  hundred  times  as  great  as  the  number  of  the 
living  with  the  knowledge  actually  possessed  by 
mankind.  Could  such  a  number  be  accommodated 
with  food,  fuel,  raiment  and  shelter?  I  should 
think  not,  without  a  continual  miracle,  which  we 
have  no  right  to  suppose. 

Of  all  natural  evils  death  is  regarded  as  the  great- 
est by  all  men  except  a  few  crazy  suicides.  Now 
it  is  pertinent  to  inquire  whether  natural  death,  in 
all  its  phases,  is  a  penal  consequence  of  sin.  Au- 
gustine believed  the  Adamic  sin  was  the  cause  of 
death  to  man  and  also  to  all  other  animals,  and  this 
irrational  figment  has  had  a  very  strong  hold  on 
the  religious  mind.  He  was  very  certain  animals 
never  would  have  died  in  Eden  had  not  sin  been 


88  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

originated.  Had  he  lived  in  the  nineteenth  centu- 
ry his  mystic  tendencies  would  not  have  carried 
him  so  far.  He  would  have  been  content  to  allow 
sin  to  be  the  cause  of  physical  death  to  human  be- 
ings only,  and  would  have  allowed  the  animals  to 
die,  seeing  God  had  so  constituted  some  species  as 
to  make  their  subsistence  dependent  on  the  flesh  of 
others.  You  ask  the  physiologist,  the  anatomist, 
the  scientist  generally,  whether  Christian  or  infi- 
del, whether  the  creator  intended  man  to  live 
eternally  in  the  animal  body  as  when  first  created. 
'They  will  answer  emphatically,  "No."  The  basis 
of  this  conclusion  is,  man  is  an  organized  being 
and  hence  from  a  necessity  inherent  in  his  nature 
he,  like  all  other  organized  beings,  plants  and  ani- 
mals, must  die. 

If  you  suggest  to  the  infidel  scientist  that  sin  is 
the  cause  of  death  he  will  laugh  at  your  credulity. 
If  you  suggest  the  same  idea  to  a  Christian  scientist 
he  will  probably  suggest  that  you  must  either  mis- 
interpret the  Bible  in  its  general  teachings  on  the 
subject,  or  take  the  word  death  in  a  sense  not  in- 
tended by  the  inspired  writers.  Now  the  book  of 
V  nature  and  the  book  of  revelation  are  both  from 
God.  He  is  as  truly  the  author  of  the  one  as  of  the 
other.  When  the  students  of  these  books  make 
■^  them  contradict  each  other  God  is  misinterpret- 
ed. 

Sec.  II. — Are  death  and  all  haman  sufferings 
PenaH — In  this  connection  I  propose  to  consider 
the  question:  Are  natural  death  and  all  its  physical 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  89 

suflferings  punishments  for  sin  in  the  person  of  the 
sufferer  ? 

The  affirmative  of  this  question  has  been  perti- 
naciously asserted  from  the  day  of  Augustine  to  the 
present  hour.  But  when  we  inquire  for  the  proof 
of  this  proposition  we  are  utterly  amazed  at  its 
scantiness. 

Let  us  briefly  glance  at  the  proof.  Gen.  ii.  19: 
"In  the  day,"  etc.  It  is  assumed  that  death  in 
this  verse  is  to  be  understood  in  a  complex  sense, 
so  as  to  include  both  spiritual  and  physical  death. 
But  it  is,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  an  assumption  with- 
out any  conclusive  proof.  This  interpretation 
seems  to  me  impossible  for  the  following  reasons: 

1.  All  the  facts  stated  in  the  previous  chapter 
concerning  sin  and  natural  evil  afford  powerful  pre- 
sumption against  this  interpretation,  for  if  natural  ^y 
evil  existed  before  Adam,  natural  death  has  no 
causal  relation  to  sin.  Then  of  course  natural 
evil  cannot  be  the  punishment  of  sin  or  any  part  of 
that  punishment. 

2.  That  the  word  death  is  often  used  to  express 
the  separation  of  the  soul  from  God,  and  is  also  of- 
ten used  to  express  the  separation  of  soul  and 
body,  is  readily  admitted.  But  what  authority 
have  we  for  believing  that  this  single  word  death 
in  this  text  is  intended  to  express  both  these  ideas? 
Is  it  used  in  the  complex  or  double  sense  in  any 
other  text  in  the  Bible  or  in  any  human  composi- 
tion? If  so,  where?  Is  any  other  word  in  the 
Bible  used  in  any  single  proposition  without  qual- 
ification to  express  at  one  and  the  same  time  two 


90  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

ideas  so  essentially  distinct  as  that  of  spiritual  and 
physical  death  ?  I  do  not  know  one.  Indeed  if  this 
were  the  rule, language,  instead  of  being  a  vehicle  for 
conveying  clear  and  distinct  thought,  would  be 
only  a  source  of  endless  confusion.  Though  most 
words  are  more  or  less  ambiguous,  yet  we  are  im- 
peratively required  by  the  laws  of  interpretation  to 
take  them  in  every  instance  of  their  use  in  one  of 
their  accepted  meanings  and  not  in  more  than  one. 
With  the  application  of  this  obvious  and  necessary 
rule  to  the  word  in  hand,  we  are  not  at  liberty  to 
assert  that  death,  natural,  spiritual  and  eternal,  is 
here  intended  to  be  expressed.  We  must,  in  all 
fairness,  say  one  thing  and  not  many,  is  intended. 
But  all  admit  that  spiritual  death  is  at  least  a  part 
of  the  penalty.  Then  if  we  infer  that  Adam  did 
die  spiritually,  spiritual  death,  and  not  natural 
death,  was  intended. 

3.  The  penalty  threatened  was  immediate  death 
and  it  is  allowed  that  spiritual  death  did  instantly 
intervene  the  instant  Adam  purposed  to  eat  the 
fruit,  even  before  he  had  accomplished  the  external 
act.  This  literally  verifies  the  truth  of  the  text. 
But  if  natural  death  was  a  part  of  the  penalty  in- 
tended in  the  text,  then  its  truthfulness  was  not 
verified,  for  he  did  not  die  according  to  the  natural 
import  of  the  text,  but  lived  according  to  our  chro- 
nology more  than  nine  hundred  years.  If  it  should 
be  said  that  though  he  did  not  die  instantly,  yet  he 
was  instantly  put  under  condemnation  to  death, 
the  event  itself  "being  deferred  by  the  mediation  of 
Christ,  then  I  briefly  reply,  (a)  That  this  view  does 


S/AT  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  91 

not  interpret  the  text,  but  largely  supplements  it. 
To  be  put  under  condemnation  to  death  and  to  die  ^ 
are  two  very  distinct  things,  especially  when  sepa- 
rated by  a  period  of  nine  hundred  years.  If  Adam 
became  a  pious  and  good  man,  as  is  generally  al- 
lowed, I  can  very  well  imagine  that  he,  like  good 
old  Simeon,  learned  to  long  for  an  event  which 
would  prove  to  him  the  end  of  all  earthly  ill  and  a 
gate  to  endless  joy.  Not  much  curse,  not  much 
penal  anguish  in  that  death,  (b)  If  the  mediation 
of  Christ  availed  to  defer  one  part  of  the  penalty  >* 
for  nine  hundred  years  and  then  convert  it  into  a 
blessing,  why  did  it  not  avail  to  defer  the  other 
part  of  the  penalty  also  ?  As  it  did  not  avail  in  one 
case  we  have  no  authority,  so  far  as  I  know,  to  be- 
lieve it  did  in  the  other.  The  text  fairly  treated  is  un- 
favorable to  the  idea  that  natural  death  is  any  part 
of  the  penalty  threatened  in  Eden.  This  conclusion 
is  supported  by  the  following  facts: 

Adam  when  called  to  account  for  his  sin  seemed  >^ 
to  stand  in  no  apprehension  of  natural  death. 
When  called  to  account  by  his  creator  he  said :  "I 
heard  thy  voice  in  the  garden  and  was  afraid  be- 
cause I  was  naked  and  hid  myself."  He  is  truly 
afraid  but  the  ground  of  that  fear  was  not  the  ap- 
prehension of  death  but,  as  he  alleges,  his  naked- 
ness. He  was  deeply  and  painfully  conscious  of 
the  moral  effect  of  his  sin,  but  seems  to  have  thought 
of  no  natural  evil.  Now  if  physical  death  was  a 
part  of  the  penalty  Adam  certaiuly  knew  it  and 
when  brought  face  to  face  with  his  creator  and 
judge  would  have  had  his  thoughts  fixed  upon  his 


•n^ 


92  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

liability  to  instant  death  rather  than  upon  the  sim- 
ple fact  that  he  was  naked.  But  not  a  word  of  such 
explanation  is  given,  and  the  reasonable  explana- 
tion is  that  what  does  not  exist  needs  no  explana- 
tion. Gen.  iii.  14,  19,  is  very  much  relied  on  to 
prove  that  natural  death  is  a  penal  infliction  upon 
Adam  and  by  imputation  upon  his  posterity.  Per- 
haps no  paragraph  in  the  Bible  has  been  more 
abused  by  learned  critics  and  exegetes  than  this 
which  is  commonly  called  the  Adamic  curse. 

An  extreme  rationalism  that  seeks  to  eliminate 
from  the  Bible  every  element  of  the  supernatural 
is  certainly  a  dangerous  form  of  error.  But  an  ex- 
treme literalism  that  seeks  to  eliminate  the  natural 
and  replace  it  with  the  supernatural  is  perhaps  not 
less  dangerous.  Modern  as  well  as  ancient  com- 
mentators seem  to  lose  sight  of  the  highly  an- 
thropomorphic and  anthropopathic  character  of 
the  Old  Testament  scriptures,  especially  of  the  first 
part  of  Genesis.  Also  of  the  very  important  fact 
that  what  is  done  by  human  agency  and  occurs  by 
laws  of  matter,  and  also  the  laws  of  mind,  is 
ascribed  to  the  supernatural  agency  of  God.  And 
the  natural  is  excluded  and  the  supernatural  is  made 
to  take  its  place.  Thus  the  Great  Spirit  is  repre- 
sented as  walking,  or  standing,  or  planting  a  gar- 
den in  Eden,  or  making  coats  of  skins  to  clothe 
Adam  and  Eve,  as  driving  man  out  of  the  garden 
and  placing  there  a  cherubim  to  keep  the  way  of 
the  tree  of  life. 

This  method  of  expression,  I  suppose,  was  nec- 
essary in  the  state  of  human  knowledge  then  exist- 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  93 

ing.  Adam  knew  something,  perhaps  mnch,  of  God 
through  this  anthropomorphic  mode  of  communi- 
cation, but  from  the  necessity  ot  the  case  he  knew 
nothing  or  but  very  little  of  nature  or  God  in  na- 
ture. Hence  almost  everything  both  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural  were  indiscriminately  ascribed 
to  the  supernatural.  But  in  our  interpretation  of 
the  Bible  we  must  discriminate  as  far  as  possible 
between  the  natural  and  supernatural  and,  as  has 
been  said  before,  we  must  never  admit  the  superna-  . 
tural  except  where  the  natural  is  utterly  inadequate 
to  account  for  the  facts  that  may  have  to  do  with  , 
the  subject  in  hand.  On  any  other  plan  we  con- 
found things  in  themselves  essentially  distinct,  ren- 
der the  supernatural  incredible  and  resolve  all  re- 
ligion either%into  a  cold  rationalism  or  a  blank 
superstition.  God  never  uses  extraordinary  means  \^ 
when  ordinary  ones  will  do  just  as  well. 

Now  the  exegetical  vice  that  results  from  a  dis- 
regard of  these  common  sense  principles  is  com- 
mitted, I  believe,  in  this  explanation  of  this  so- 
called  Adamic  curse.     Gen.  iii.  14,  19. 

1.  I  understand  the  curse  to  be  purely  subjective, 

or  that  all  the  evils  here  specified   were  the  neces-  ^ 
sary  consequences  of  alienation  from  God.     These 
consequences   affected   nothing  outside  the  guilty 
parties  themselves. 

2.  The  serpent  was  not  a  beast  of  the  field.     The  \ 
words  by  which  he  is  designated  say  he  was  more 
subtle  than  any  beast  of  the  field.     Of  course,  then  1 
he  was  no  mere  serpent,  whatever  may  have  been  \ 
his  form.     Satan,  it   is  allowed,   was  the  serpent. 


94  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

He  was  cursed  for  this  as  for  all  other  sins,  for  every 
sin  brings  a  curse.  This  crawling  upon  his  belly 
and  eating  dust,  if  the  reference  be  to  Satan,  must 
be  taken  metaphorically. 

As  crawling  upon  the  belly  is  a  skulking  and  un- 
obtrusive as  well  as  a  degrading  mode  of  move- 
ment, so  the  movement  of  Satan,  as  eating  dust  is 
a  low  means  of  subsistence,  so  the  enjoyments  of 
Satan.  If  a  literal  curse  is  meant  the  curse  pro- 
nounced upon  him  is,  of  course,  symbolical,  or  he 
certainly  crawled  upon  his  belly  as  literally  before 
the  fall  as  after  it  and  no  more  truly  ate  dirt  after 
than  before  it.  The  serpent,  I  take  it,  was  in  no 
sense  injured  by  the  fall,  unless  to  be  used  as  a  sym- 
bol of  Satan  might  seem  an  injustice.  If  he  is  con- 
scious of  this  fact,  he  has  not  taken  it  much  to 
heart.  He  had  his  natural  enemies  before  as  after 
the  fall. 

3.  The  curse  upon  the  woman  consisted  of  two 
points:  First,  the  multiplication  of  her  sorrow; 
and  second,  subjection  to  her  husband.  The  lan- 
guage fairly  implies  that  if  she  had  never  sinned 
she  would  have  had  sorrow.  We  cannot  multiply 
nothing  into  something.  Hence  sin  did  not  orig- 
inate, only  multiplied,  it.  As  to  her  subjection  to 
her  husband,  it  is  certainly  true  that  she  was  created 
in  that  state.  Her  sin  did  not  originate  that  sub- 
jection, it  only  rendered  possible  some  household 
trouble  and  family  broils,  the  natural  consequence 
of  sin  as  it  is  yet. 

4.  The  special  points  in  Adam's  case  are  as  fol- 
lows :     "  Cursed  is  the  ground  for  thy  sake,"  or  on 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  95 

thy  account  in  relation  to  thee.  The  ground  was 
cursed  not  on  its  own  account  but  on  Adam's.  This 
directs  attention  to  Adam  as  the  offender,  and  as 
the  real  object  of  the  curse,  for  we  are  not  at  liberty 
to  suppose  that  the  ground  became  a  substitute  for 
him  or  was  punished  in  his  stead. 

If  the  curse  was  objective  then  the  physical  con- 
dition of  the  earth  was  materially  changed.  The 
supposition  that  God  deprived  it  in  part  of  its  fer- 
tility, and  changed  to  some  extent  its  flora,  exter- 
minating some  of  its  most  valuable  fruit  bearing 
trees  and  plants,  and  causing  less  valuable  ones,  as 
thorns  and  thistles  to  grow  in  their  places  is  with- 
out sufficient  proof.  We  learn  from  Genesis  that 
God  created  the  flora  of  the  earth  on  the  third  of 
the  creative  days.  But  if  this  objective  theory  is 
true,  then  after  the  fall  of  man  God  revised  his  own 
work  and  changed  its  form  from  the  better  to  the 
worse.  But  is  it  admissible  to  suppose,  or  is  it 
creditable,  that  God  did  create  thorns  and  thistles 
as  a  means  of  tormenting  poor  guilty  men  ?  This 
it  seems  to  me  is  quite  too  anthropomorthic,  or 
rather  too  diabolomorphic  to  receive  the  assent  of 
any  intelligent  mind.  There  were  a  thousand  other 
methods  of  punishing  the  culprit  without  defacing 
the  fair  works  of  his  own  divine  hand.  If  the  sub- 
jective theory  be  true  then  we  are  at  liberty  to  be- 
lieve that  God  created  the  thorn  and  the  thistle  on 
the  third  creative  day  when  he  created  the  other 
flora  and  that  he  did  not  on  the  occasion  of  Adam's 
sin  in  a  rage  of  towering  passion  fall  upon  his  own 
beautiful  work  to  despoil  it  of  its  excellency.     What 


96  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

a  wonderful  change  is  that  which  occurs  when  a 
sinner  who  has  all  his  life  regarded  Christ  as  a  root 
out  of  dry  ground,  having  neither  form  nor  come- 
liness, and  suddenly  comes  to  regard  him  the  chief 
of  ten  thousand,  and  the  one  altogether  lovely. 
Or  when  a  sinner  united  to  Christ  by  faith  feels 
that  he  is  a  new  creattire,  that  old  things  have 
passed  away  and  all  things  have  become  new. 
Wonderful  changes  are  these.  But  where  is  the 
change,  in  the  object  or  in  the  subject,  in  Christ  or 
in  the  sinner?  Everyone  knows  how  to  answer 
this  question.  The  change  is  purely  subjective  in 
the  sinner's  heart.  It  is  a  well-known  philosoph- 
ical truth  that  things  external  to  ourselves  are  to  us 
for  the  time  being  just  what  we  esteem  them  to 
be.  That  is  the  soul  throws  its  inner  light  or  inner 
darkness  over  everything  around  it,  and  things  are 
esteemed  comely  or  uncomely,  good  or  bad,  bless- 
ings or  curses,  according  to  the  prevalence  of  this 
inner  light  and  darkness. 

According  to  the  subjective  theory  the  thorn  and 
the  thistles  grew  as  truly  and  abundantly  before  the 
fall  as  after  it,  but  they  were  not  sources  of  annoy- 
ance to  the  innocent  pair  in  Paradise,  because  they 
did  not  esteem  them  evil.  Duty  was  a  pleasure, 
and  if  occasion  required  the  removal  of  a  thorn  or 
thistle  it  was  no  less  a  pleasure  than  any  other  duty. 
It  gave  no  occasion  of  dark  brooding  over  objective 
evils,  provoked  no  impatience  or  murmurings 
against  nature  or  providence,  or  God.  No  com- 
plainings against  a  hard  lot.  The  ground  brought 
forth  thorns  and  thistles,  but  they  were  no   thorns 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  97 

to  them,  or   no  occasion  of  discontent,  or  disquie- 
tude or  unhappiness  to  them. 

The  third  evil  pronounced  against  Adam  was  that 
he  should  eat  bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  face.  Here 
the  evil  falls  directly  upon  the  sinner.  The  point 
of  interest  in  this  respect  is,  was  this  the  result  of 
sin  ?  What  has  been  said  previously  will  aid  us  in 
the  solution  of  this  question.  Man  was  made  for 
activity,  for  labor  both  physical  and  mental,  and 
his  subsistence  and  comforts  were  conditional  upon 
his  labor.  God  gave  him  the  means  of  acquiring 
these,  but  he  was  required  to  use  the  means  God 
had  given  just  as  he  does  now  and  always  will  do. 
The  first  recorded  command  the  creator  ever  gave 
the  newly  created  pair  contained  the  specific  injunc- 
tion to  subdue  the  earth.  Here  was  work  in  abund- 
ance for  both  brain  and  muscle,  and  when  the  gar- 
den was  planted  Adam  was  put  in  charge  of  it  with 
the  injunction  to  dress  and  keep  it.  These  com- 
mands, be  it  remembered,  were  given  before  the 
fall.  Hence  it  is  certain  man  was  made  to  labor, 
and  to  live  by  his  labor.  This  was  as  much  the 
order  of  nature  before  the  fall  as  after  it.  What 
then  can  be  meant  when  it  is  said  to  him  after  the 
fall,  ' '  In  the  sweat  of  thy  face  shalt  thou  eat  bread  ?' ' 
Nothing  more  than  that  his  own  sinful,  querulous 
and  discontented  nature  should  greatly  embitter  that 
which  before  the  fall  was  both  a  duty  and  a  pleas- 
ure. What  was  before  esteemed  a  pleasure — a  de- 
lightful recreation — is  now  esteemed  a  drudgery,  a 
hard  necessity,  a  calamity,  a  curse.  The  change  is 
in  the  man,  not  in  the  soils  or  seasons,  nor  in  his 


98  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

dependence  upon  personal  exertion  for  subsistence 
and  comfort.  The  change  that  came  over  man  in 
regard  to  labor  may  be  imperfectly  represented  by 
the  marked  difference  between  individuals  in  regard 
to  both  muscular  and  brain  labor,  also  by  the  differ- 
ence in  the  same  individual  at  different  periods  of 
his  history.  What  some  esteem  a  pleasure  others 
esteem  a  hard  necessity  and  make  it  the  occasion 
of  a  continual  self-torture.  Some  children  hate 
labor,  mental  and  physical,  but  afterwards  learn  to 
love  one  or  both.  Now  all  this  results  from  sub- 
jective and  not  objective  causes,  from  the  state  of 
mind  and  not  things  external  to  ourselves.  This 
illustrates  the  nature  of  the  evil  brought  on  our 
race  by  sin  and  on  us,  i.  e,,  by  a  subjective  and  not 
objective  process. 

I  wish  now  before  I  close  this  brief  reference  to 
the  Adamic  curse  to  contrast  the  two  schemes  of 
interpretation. 

For  the  sake  of  brevity  let  A.  be  the  objective, 
B.  the  subjective  scheme.  A.  asserts  that  the  changes 
wrought  upon  the  several  parties  concerned  were 
supernatural,  objective  and  physical.  B.  denies  and 
asserts  that  the  changes  were  natural,  subjective  and 
moral.  A.  asserts  that  the  changes  were  wrought 
by  the  direct  fiat  of  the  creator.  B.  denies  and 
asserts  that  the  changes  were  the  necessary  results 
of  second  causes,  or  of  the  corruption  of  the  moral 
nature  by  rebellion  against  the  creator.  A.  asserts 
that  the  serpent  before  the  fall  moved  erect,  or  in 
some  way  different  from  its  subsequent  mode  of 
movement.     That  it  was  so  changed  in  its  physical 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  99 

structure  and  habits  that  it  crawled  upon  its  belly 
and  ate  dust.  B.  denies  and  holds  that  the  literal 
serpent  is  a  symbol  of  Satan  and  the  evils  pro- 
nounced upon  it  are  symbolical  of  the  character- 
istics and  doom  of  that  "old  serpent,  the  devil," 
and  that  the  literal  serpent  was  not  changed,  either 
in  form  or  habit.  A.  asserts  that  the  woman  was 
physilogically  so  changed  as  to  render  her  condi- 
tion in  gestation  and  parturition  more  painful  and 
perilous.  B.  denies  and  asserts  that  there  was  no 
physiological  change  or  change  of  any  kind  (in  this 
regard)  except  what  sin  and  moral  depravity  are 
capable  of  producing  upon  womanly  functions  by  un- 
hygienic habits  in  the  deliberation  of  the  vital  func- 
tions and  constitutional  debility.  Sin  withers  and 
abnormalizes  whatever  it  touches,  and  pours  its 
virus  along  the  veins  of  humanity  through  the  suc- 
cessive generations.  A.  asserts  that  the  woman 
was,  by  a  divine  fiat,  put  under  an  abnormal  sub- 
jection to  her  husband.  B.  denies,  and  alleges  that 
woman  was  created  in  a  state  of  subjection  to  her 
husband,  and  that  all  the  abnormalness  of  that 
subjection  after  the  fall  was  the  natural  result,  not  the 
supernatural,  of  moral  corruption  and  its  consequent 
ignorance,  unkindness,  injustice  and  brutality.  A. 
asserts  that  the  ground  was  so  changed  as  to 
lose  in  part  its  former  fertility,  and  its  flora  lit- 
erally changed  so  that  profitable  fruit  bearing  trees 
and  shrubs  were  actually  destroyed  and  noxious 
trees  and  plants  caused  to  grow  in  their  stead,  for 
the  purpose  of  rendering  man's  toils  more  arduous, 
and  his  subsistence   more   precarious.     B.    denies, 


lOO  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

and  alleges  that  the  course  of  the  physical  world 
was  not  supernaturally  changed,  that  the  earth  was 
cursed,  not  physically  but  only  in  relation  to  man, 
in  such  a  way  that  what  was  in  itself  good,  might  by 
the  corruptness  and  perversness  of  the  human 
heart  be  made  the  occasion  of  evils,  just  as  are 
these  blessings  of  the  divine  Father  by  human  wick- 
edness converted  into  curses.  B.  also  asserts  that 
thornsand  thistles  grew  before  as  well  as  after  the  fall, 
and  these  terms  in  the  text  may  be  taken  in  a  sym- 
bolical sense,  as  representative  of  all  these  things, 
harmless  in  themselves,  which  men  may  make  the 
occasion  of  trouble.  They  grow  along  every  path, 
beset  every  vocation,  and  are  incident  to  every  sta- 
tion of  life.  But  they  may  be  in  a  large  measure 
avoided  or  overcome;  or  by  God's  goodness  even 
turned  to  good  account.  A.  asserts  that  man's 
state  of  labor  is  abnormal,  subsequent  to  the  fall, 
and  that  it  was  supernaturally  and  judicially  im- 
posed as  a  punishment  for  sin.  B.  denies,  and  al- 
leges that  a  state  of  labor  is  man's  normal  condi- 
tion, whether  sinful  or  innocent,  and  that  all  ab- 
normality in  his  sinful  state  is  the  natural  result  of 
his  own  abnormality.  A.  asserts  that  because  of 
Adam's  sin  the  creator  turns  away  from  man,  and 
in  wrath  denounces  upon  him  the  curse,  and  by  the 
curse  brought  upon  him,  the  total  corruption  of  his 
moral  nature,  and  all  other  evils  physical  and 
moral,  thus  making  the  sin  the  occasion  of  the 
curse,  and  the  curse  causative  of  all  evil.  B.  de- 
nies, and  asserts  that  Adam's  own  voluntary  sin 
was  causative  of  his  corruption  of  nature  and  of  his 


Sin  and  physical  evil.  ioi 

changed  ethical  relation  to  the  physical  world,  that 
the  so-called  curse  did  not  in  any  sense  change  for 
the  worse  his  condition,  for  the  whole  curse  was  in 
his  sin  and  his  consequent  depravity,  both  of  which 
transpired  before  the  utterance  of  the  curse;  that 
the  so-called  curse  was  consequently  rather  a  reve- 
lation than  the  origination  of  the  curse  and 
also  a  gracious  revelation  unfolded  to  Adam,  even 
more  fully  than  his  consciousness  had  already 
done,  the  enormity  of  his  guilt,  and  also  what  his 
future  trouble  should  be  on  account  of  his  sins, 
thus  forewarning  him  against  other  sins.  A.  as- 
serts, or  seems  to  assume,  that  God  was  in  some 
way  taken  by  surprise  at  Adam's  sin,  and  in  wrath 
denounced  curses  upon  him,  and  turned  away  from 
him,  or  withdrew  from  him  his  great  love.  B.  ob- 
jects to  this  and  alleges  that  God  knew  the  end 
from  the  beginning,  and  was  fully  prepared  for  the 
event,  that  man,  instead  of  ceasing  to  be  an  object 
of  the  creator's  solicitude  and  care,  was  if  possible 
an  object  of  deeper  anxiety  after  the  fall  than  be- 
fore it,  on  the  principle  that  there  is  more  joy 
among  the  angels  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth 
than  over  ninety  and  nine  that  need  no  repentance, 
and  for  the  reason  that  the  good  shepherd  leaves 
the  ninety  and  nine  and  goes  to  the  mountain  in 
search  of  the  one  stray  sheep.  The  divine  heart  is 
afiFected  by  the  sad  ruin  that  sin  has  wrought  very 
much  as  the  heart  of  a  wise  governor  and  father 
would  be  by  the  condition  of  a  self-ruined  child. 
As  a  governor  he  administers  the  law,  as  a  father 
he  must  and  does  deeply  pity  his  sin.     As  a  con- 


102  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

elusive  evidence  that  the  creator  did  not  turn  away 
from  the  sinner,  or  that  his  hitherto  overflowing 
complacency  is  now  turned  to  overflowing  love  of 
commiseration,  we  find  that  in  his  announcement 
to  the  serpent  and  before  he  had  revealed  to  Adam 
the  consequences  of  sin,  he  actually  announced  a 
"  Savior  " — a  deliverer.  "The  seed  of  woman  shall 
bruise  thy  head." 

I  have  now  g^ven  you  briefly  the  fundamental 
characteristics  of  the  two  theories  of  the  so-called 
Adamic  curse,  the  objective  and  the  subjective. 
The  former  has  the  sanction  of  orthodoxy  so- 
called.  The  latter,  in  my  judgment,  has  the  sup- 
port of  philosophy  and  the  log^c  of  Bible  facts. 
You  can  choose  for  yourselves. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE  RELATION  OF  SIN  TO  NATURAL    AND  PHYSI- 
CAL EVIL. 
(Continued.) 

IN  order  to  reach  a  clear  and  satisfactory  explana- 
tion of  Gen.  iii.  22-24,  we  must  first  exclude  the 
ideas  of  physical  life  and  physical  death.     The 
text,  I  think,  is  to  be  regarded  as  both  literal  and 
symbolical. 

1.  The  garden  was  literally  the  place  and  sym- 
bolically the  state  of  happy  communion  with  God. 

2.  The  tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  was 
literally  a  tree,  but  symbolical  of  the  consequences 
of  disobedience,  i.e.,  alienation  from  God,  or  spir- 
ual  death. 

3.  The  tree  of  life  was  literally  a  tree,  and  also 
symbolical  of  the  consequences  of  disobedience, 
i.e.,  spiritual  life,  or  happy  fellowship  with  God — 
not  the  source  of  either  physical  or  spiritual  life. 

4.  The  expulsion  from  the  garden  was  literal, 
and  also  symbolical  of  loss  of  fellowship  with  God, 
i.e.,  spiritual  death. 

5.  The  cherubim  and  the  flaming  sword  were 
possibly  literal,  but  probably  only  symbolical  of 
divine  providence,  preventing  access  to  the  tree  of 
life. 


I04  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

With  this  presentation  of  the  subject,  everything 
in  the  text  can,  I  think,  be  satisfactorily  harmon- 
ized, and  the  difficulties  which  beset  all  adverse 
theories  successfully  obviated. 

I  will  make  my  explanations  as  brief  as  compat- 
ible with  clearness. 

li  "The  man  is  become  as  one  of  us  to  know 
good  and  evil." 

These  words  may  be,  and  I  think  generally  are, 
taken  as  ironical.  The  serpent  had  said  to  Eve, 
"Ye  shall  be  as  Gods  knowing  good  and  evil." 
Chap.  iii.  4. 

Many  expositors  think  that  God  repeats  these 
words  of  the  serpent  ironically. 

We  know  that  the  Bible  does  sometimes  use 
irony.  Christ  himself  ironically  repeats  the  lan- 
guage of  the  man  to  whom  one  talent  had  been 
given.  ' '  Thou  knowest  that  I  reap  where  I  sowed 
not  and  gather  where  I  have  not  strowed." 

If  these  words,  "The  man  has  become  as  one  of 
us  to  know  good  and  evil,"  had  been  spoken  to 
Adam  himself,  and  had  God  made  the  allegation 
the  ground  of  his  expulsion,  we  might  very  reason- 
ably consider  them  to  be  used  ironically.  But  to 
use  irony  of  a  person  and  then  proceed  to  make  the 
allegation  the  ground  or  reason  of  an  important  ac- 
tion is  not  very  consistent,  because  it  assumes  that 
the  action  is  without  reason. 

I  therefore  think  that  the  words  were  not  intend- 
ed as  irony,  but  as  expressing  a  real  historic  fact. 
If  this  is  so  then  the  words,  "The  man  has  become 
one  of  us  to  know  good  and  evil,"  mean,  I  sup- 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  105 

pose,  that  Adam  had  come  to  know  good  and  evil 
experimentally,  or  had  experienced  good  and  evil 
in  contrast.  Hence  what  God  knew  intuitively, 
perhaps  Adam  knew  in  a  bitter  experience. 

2.  "Lest  he  put  forth  his  hand  and  take  also  of 
the  tree  of  life  and  eat  and  live  forever." 

This  language  fairly  implies  that  Adam,  if  per- 
mitted to  remain  in  the  garden,  and  to  have  access 
to  the  tree  of  life  and  to  eat  of  its  fruit,  would, 
in  some  sense,  live  forever.  To  prevent  his  living 
forever  seems  to  be  the  reason  for  his  expulsion 
from  the  garden  and  for  the  employment  of  the 
cherubim  and  the  flaming  sword. 

The  difficulty  of  the  explanation  arises  out  of 
the  words  '*  live  forever." 

In  what  sense  would  he  live  forever  if  permitted 
to  eat  of  this  tree?     This  is  the  vital  question. 

I.  If  these  words  refer  to  true  spiritual  life — a 
happy  fellowship  with  God — to  have  free  access  to 
this  tree  of  life  was  the  very  thing  Adam  most 
needed,  and  also  the  very  thing  that  God,  if  he  de- 
sired his  happiness,  would  be  quite  willing  to  give. 
But  as  God  did  not  give  him  access  we  must  seek 
some  other  meaning  for  those  words,  "live  for- 
ever. ' ' 

7,.  If  we  say  these  words  refer  to  physical  life,  as 
is  generally  done,  then  we  render  any  satisfactory 
explanation  impossible. 

(i)  Because  we  assume  that  Adam  could,  by  eat- 
ing of  this  fruit,  set  aside  God's  purpose  as  to  his 
mortality  and  make  himself  immortal. 

(2)  As  we  assume  that  this  tree  had  in  itself  a 


io6  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

power  stronger  than  God,  and  that  to  prevent  him 
from  becoming,  contrary  to  God's  will,  physically 
immortal,  he  must  be  expelled  from  the  garden. 

(3)  This  physical  life  hypothesis  assumes  that 
God  had  power  to  put  Adam  out  of  the  garden  and 
keep  him  out,  but  not  power  to  prevent  him,  if  he 
remained  in  the  garden,  from  eating  of  this  tree 
and  from  being  physically  immortal. 

All  these  glaring  incongruities  grow  necessarily 
out  of  the  assumption  that  natural  death  in  Gen., 
chap.  ii.  17,  and  natural  life  in  chap.  iii.  22,  are  re- 
spectively intended. 

In  opposition  to  this  hypothesis  I  suggest  that 
the  words  "live  forever"  refer  not  to  real  spiritual 
life,  not  to  physical  life  in  any  form,  but  to  sym- 
bolical life,  a  life  not  real,  but  purely  ideal  or  nom- 
inal. 
'  Let  us  test  this  hypothesis  by  the  facts. 

1.  It  was  not  the  mere  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge,  but  this  intention,  the  disobe- 
dience in  the  intention  to  eat  that  produced  death. 
The  act  of  eating  was  the  evidence  of  the  inten- 
tion. Hence  we  may  consider  the  tree  itself  as  the 
symbol  of  death.  In  like  manner  the  tree  of  life 
was  not  the  source  of  real  life,  but  only  the  symbol 
of  life.  If  this  is  true,  then  the  words  "live  for- 
ever" cannot  mean  anything  more  or  different 
from  symbolic  life.  For  illustration,  if  baptism  is 
a  symbol  of  regeneration,  then  of  course  the  ad- 
ministration of  it  can  give  only  symbolic,  not  real, 
regeneration. 

2.  But  do  the  sacred  writers  recognize  this  sym- 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  I07 

bolic  or  nominal  life?  Certainly.  *'Iknow  thy 
works,  that  thou  hast  a  name  that  thou  livest,  and 
art  dead."     Rev.  iii.  i. 

In  the  apostles'  day  all  that  believed  in  Christ 
had  spiritual  life,  and  all  that  professed  to  believe 
had  nominally  the  same.  All  that  were  baptized 
were  called  saints  or  holy  ones,  but  all  such  were 
not  really  so,  as  Simon  Magus.  Such  had  nomi- 
nal, but  not  real,  spiritual  life.  If  Adam  had  been 
permitted  access  to  the  tree  of  life  he  would  have 
been  nominally  alive  but  really  spiritually  dead. 

3.  Adam  was  already  mortal,  either  by  crea- 
tion, or  by  the  decree  of  God  for  his  disobedience. 
The  fruit  of  the  tree  of  life  could  not  convert  his 
mortality  into  immortality. 

4,  Adam  was  already  spiritually  dead — alienated 
from  God — dead  in  sin,  and  this  tree  of  life  could 
not  restore  to  spiritual  life. 

The  hypothesis  seems  to  harmonize  all  the  facts, 
and  is,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  the  only  one  that  can 
harmonize  them.  If  this  is  so,  it  is  of  necessity 
the  true  one. 

If  this  is  the  proper  explanation  of  the  text,  it 
was  not  a  curse  to  be  expelled  from  the  garden,  but 
a  blessing;  for  it  is  a  great  calamity  to  have  the 
nominal  without  the  real  spiritual  life — the  form 
without  the  power  of  godliness.  Because  we  know 
that  none  are  so  hard  to  save  as  those  who  assume 
to  be  already  saved. 

I  will  now  return  to  the  subject  in  hand.  Is 
physical  death  a  part  of  the  penalty  of  Adam's  sin? 
I  have  examined  the  evidence  relied  upon  iu  sup- 


io8  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

port  of  the  affirmative  of  this  proposition.  This 
proof  is  supposed  to  be  conclusive  from  several  ex- 
pressions used  in  the  so-called  Adamic  curse,  as 
"all  the  days  of  thy  life,"  *'till  thou  returnest 
unto  the  ground,  for  dust  thou  art  and  unto  dust 
shalt  thou  return."  Now  it  seems  to  me  that 
every  one  of  these  expressions,  when  carefully  ana- 
lyzed, instead  of  teaching  that  man  was  created 
immortal,  as  to  his  body,  do  teach  by  inevitable 
implication  the  very  reverse. 

I.  "In  sorrow  shalt  thou  eat  of  it  all  the  days  of 
thy  life "  imply  that  both  sorrow  and  life  should 
have  an  end.  The  sorrow,  in  one  aspect  of  it, 
was  confessed  to  be  a  consequence  of  sin.  But 
if  death  was  also  a  penal  consequence  (of  sin),  then 
one  penal  consequence  is  removed  by  another  penal 
consequence.  Capital  punishment  is  sometimes 
commuted  into  imprisonment  for  life.  In  this  case 
the  imprisonment  is  accepted  as  the  equivalent  of 
death.  The  imprisonment  is  penal;  the  death  is 
not  penal,  but  the  limitation  or  removal  of  the 
penalty.  If  both  the  imprisonment  and  the  death 
were  penal,  a  double  penalty  would  be  exacted. 
Hence  I  conclude  this  language,  "all  the  days  of 
thy  life,"  was  an  event  incident  to  man  from  his 
creation.  This  is  further  evident  from  the  fact  that 
exactly  the  same  words  are  used  to  the  serpent, 
"dust  shalt  thou  eat  all  the  days  of  thy  life." 
Hence  it  inevitably  follows  that  if  Adam's  death 
was  penal,  then  that  of  the  serpent  was  also  penal, 
and  if  that  of  the  serpent,  then  of  all  other  ani- 
mals.    But   it   was   previously   shown   that    some 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  109 

animals  were  created  to  live  by  the  death  of  others, 
and  that  death,  if  there  is  any  truth  in  geology, 
reigned  over  the  animal  world  thousands  of  years 
before  the  fall  of  man.  These  facts  seem  to  be 
irreconcilable  with  the  penality  of  Adam's  natural 
death. 

2.  The  words  "  till  thou  return  unto  the  ground, 
for  out  of  it  thou  wast  taken,"  teach  the  same 
truth.  The  reason  given  for  returning  to  the 
ground  is  that  he  was  taken  out  of  it,  and  not  be- 
cause he  had  sinned. 

3.  "  For  dust  thou  art  and  unto  dust  shalt  thou 
return."  Here  we  have  the  fact  of  mortality  stated, 
and  the  reason  of  it  given.  Dust  thou  art,  there- 
fore unto  dust  shalt  thou  return.  Chemically  con- 
sidered, the  body  of  man  is  literally  dust,  and  this 
was  certainly  as  true  before  the  fall  as  after  it. 
Some  commentators  allow  that  all  these  forms  of 
expression  do  imply  liability  to  death  at  the  time 
these  words  were  spoken,  which  was  after  the  fall, 
but  insist  that  they  refer  to  the  death  threatened 
in  the  prohibition.  My  first  remark  is  that  this  is 
a  cool  pctitio  princippii^  a  sheer  begging  of  the 
question,  and  of  course  is  useless  as  an  argument. 

My  second  remark  is,  if  the  death  implied  in 
these  texts  refers  to  the  death  named  in  the  prohi- 
bition, then  the  serpent's  death  must,  by  logical 
necessity,  be  referred  to  the  same  cause,  which  we 
have  seen  is  supremely  preposterous. 

Romans  v.  12,  21  ("Let  not  sin  therefore  reign 
in  your  mortal  body,  that  ye  should  obey  it  in  the 
lusts  thereof,"  ''What  fruit  had  ye  then  in  those 


no  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

things  whereof  ye  are  now  ashamed  ?  for  the  end 
of  those  things  is  death  "),  is  generally  assumed  to 
teach  that  all  physical  suffering  and  death  are 
proper  punishments  of  sin  in  the  subject. 

The  text  is  certainly  very  difficult  of  a  satisfac- 
tory exegesis.  Hence  there  is  almost  an  endless 
diversity  of  opinion  among  exegetes  and  theolo- 
gians in  regard  to  it. 

At  present  I  shall  attempt  nothing  except  to  as- 
certain what  bearing  it  may  have  on  the  subject  in 
hand.  It  is  very  clear  that  death,  in  some  sense, 
is  in  some  way  connected  with  the  first  sin  and  the 
first  man — the  first  sin  rather  than  subsequent  sins — 
because  the  first  sin  instantly  produced  the  death 
even  before  a  record  was  possible.  But  the  point 
in  question  is,  what  death  is  here  intended?  Dr. 
Shedd  says  it  is  death  temporal,  spiritual,  and  eter- 
nal. Dr.  Hodge  says  death  is  here  taken  in  the 
sense  of  penalty  for  sin,  and  assuming  physical 
death  to  be  penal,  it  of  course  was  included. 

We  must  not  forget  that  assumption  is  not  proof. 
If  physical  death  is  included  we  ought  to  be  able 
to  find  some  clear  indication  of  it  in  this  text  or 
elsewhere.  I  do  not  find  any  proof  here  or  else- 
where. On  the  contrary  I  find  some  strong  pre- 
sumption against  it. 

I.  The  context  has  not  a  word  to  say  about  phys- 
ical death,  except  in  relation  to  Christ.  The  sub- 
ject under  discussion  is  the  mediatorial  work  of 
Christ,  and  the  benefit  believers  receive  through  his 
mediation.  As  deliverance  from  physical  death  is 
jiot  one  of  these  benefits  its  introduction  into  the 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  in 

discussion  would  seem  to  be  illogical  and  superer- 
ogatory. 

2.  "Death"  is  confessed  to  be  an  ambiguous 
word.  It  is  generally  admitted  that  spiritual  death 
is  included  in  this  death.  But  I  protest  against  the 
vice  of  taking  an  ambiguous  word  in  any  given 
proposition,  in  two  or  more  of  its  specific  mean- 
ings, unless  there  is  something  in  the  connection 
to  require  it.  There  is  nothing  in  the  connection 
to  require  it,  and  the  common  rule  of  interpretation 
excludes  the  idea  that  more  than  one  kind  of  death 
is  intended.  Dr.  Hodge  evidently  felt  the  force  of 
this  fact,  and  to  avoid  the  difficulty  insisted  that  in 
this  connection  death  means  "penalty" — an  easy 
method  of  solving  a  diflficulty — if  one  word  cannot 
cover  the  ground  take  another  that  can.  This 
change  of  words,  however,  only  relieves  him  from 
the  absurdity  of  using  a  word  in  a  double  sense. 
It  by  no  means  proves  what  he  assumes  to  be  true, 
viz.,  that  physical  death  is  any  part  of  the  punish- 
ment of  sin.  Any  hypothesis  that  requires  such  a 
use  of  words  to  support  it  is  presumptively  false. 

3.  Paul  was  certainly  consistent  with  himself, 
and  if  he  used  the  word  death  in  a  complex  sense 
in  this  text  in  one  ^se,  he  is  presumed  to  so  use  it 
in  all.  If  he  used  it  in  a  specific  sense  in  one  in- 
stance he  did  so  in  all.  He  uses  the  word  death  or 
its  equivalent  six  times.  Now,  if  the  reader  will 
read  the  whole  text,  putting  the  adjective  spiritual 
before  the  word  death,  he  will  find  everything  in 
harmony,  and  withal  perfectly  perspicuous,  and  in 
full  accord  with  everything  in  the  Bible. 


1 1 2  Anthropolog  y. 

The  hypothesis  that  spiritual  death  only  is  meant 
explains  all  the  facts,  and  is  therefore  presumably 
true.  On  the  contrary,  pursuing  the  same  course, 
and  supplying  the  adjective,  physical^  before  the 
word  "death"  we  find  no  particular  trouble  until 
we  come  to  the  fifteenth  verse.  "Many  be  (phys- 
ically) dead,"  or  in  a  state  of  physical  death.  The 
word  "  many"  is  a  synonym  of  the  word  "all"  in 
verse  12.  If  you  read,  "  For,  if  through  the  offense 
of  one  all  be  (physically)  dead,  or  in  a  state  of 
physical  death,"  you  make  the  hypothesis  contra- 
dict the  facts.  It  therefore  cannot  be  true.  But 
no  other  hypotheses  are  possible  in  the  case.  The 
hypothesis  of  spiritual  death  only  explains  all  the 
facts,  the  other  cannot  explain  them.  Then  the 
former  must  be  true. 

4.  We  have  several  pairs  of  antithesis  in  this 
text,  among  them  "condemnation"  and  "justifica- 
tion." The  judgment  was  by  one  to  condemnation, 
but  the  free  gift  is  of  many  offenses  unto  justifica- 
tion. Condemnation  is  preparative  to  punishment, 
as  justification  is  preparative  to  enjoyment.  Con- 
demnation in  this  case  is  unto  death,  say  spiritual 
and  physical,  and  the  justification  is  unto  life,  or 
of  life.  Now  we  must,  from  logical  necessity,  make 
these  antithetical  terms  equally  comprehensive,  else 
they  are  not  antithetical  at  all.  If  we  take  con- 
demnation to  be  unto  spiritual  death,  then  we  must 
take  justification  to  be  unto  spiritual  life.  But  if 
we  take  condemnation  to  be  unto  both  natural  and 
spiritual  death,  then  of  course  the  justification  must 
be  unto  both  natural  and  spiritual  life.     Therefore 


SIN  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  1 13 

if  sin  subjects  us  to  both  natural  and  physical  death, 
then  justification  through  Christ  ought  to  exempt  us 
from  both  natural  and  spiritual  death.  But  we  know 
justification  does  not  exempt  from  natural  death. 

It  is,  therefore,  a  logical  necessity  that  con- 
demnation does  not  subject  us  to  natural  death. 
This  is  absolutely  conclusive. 

This  same  conclusion  flows  out  of  the  inherent 
force  of  other  antithetical  terms,  used  in  the  text — 
out  of  the  words  "death"  and  "life."  If  we  make 
the  term  death  include  both  natural  and  spiritual 
death,  we  must  make  the  term  life  include  both 
natural  and  spiritual  life.  This  again  brings  the 
theory  in  conflict  with  the  facts,  for  those  that  be- 
lieve have  spiritual  and  eternal  life,  still  they  have 
to  die  physically.  Or  if  we  accept  Dr.  Hodge's 
idea,  and  say  that  death  is  put  for  the  whole  penal- 
ty of  sin,  and  substitute  the  word  reward  as  its 
appropriate  antithesis,  nothing  is  gained  ;  because  ^ 
if  we  have  put  natural  death  in  the  penalty  we  must  ^ 
put  natural  life  in  the  reward.  But  we  know  it  is 
not  there,  or  if  natural  death  is  in  the  penalty,  the 
apostle  had  to  pay  it,  for  Christ  never  paid  it  for 
him  ;  or  if  he  did,  the  penalty  was  twice  paid,  or 
the  divine  administration  has  received  more  than 
its  due,  or  else  Paul's  own  death  supplemented  the 
atoning  work  of  Christ.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  im- 
perative upon  us  to  admit  all  these  absurdities,  or 
reject  the  idea  that  human  suffering  is  strictly  the 
punishment  of  sin. 

I  Cor.  XV.  21,  22  :  "  For  since  by  man  came  death 
by  man  came  also  the  resurrection  of  the   dead. 


114  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

For  as  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in  Christ  shall  all 
be  made  alive."  In  the  common  theory  this  text 
is  assumed  to  furnish  conclusive  evidence  that 
natural  death  is  a  penal  consequence  of  Ad- 
am's sin.  I  readily  grant  that  if  we  assume  this 
death  to  be  penal  then  the  text  admits  a  very  easy 
solution.  But  we  should  remember  that  the  very 
point  to  be  proved  is  that  this  death  is  penal,  and  it 
is  not  to  be  assumed.  It  is  evident  that  with  a 
little  supplementing  the  text  may  be  made  to  teach 
that  doctrine.  For  if  we  read,  "  Since  by  man's 
sin  came  death,"  thea  the  liability  to  death  would 
sustain  to  sin  the  relation  of  sequent  to  antecedent. 
But  we  have  injected  into  the  text  a  very  important 
element,  which  is  capable  of  changing  the  whole 
aspect  of  the  question.  But  the  text,  as  it  stands 
without  supplementing,  does  not  necessarily  nor 
probably  teach  the  penality  of  natural  death.  All 
that  the  text  clearly  and  unmistakably  does  teach 
is  that  by  man  or  through  (dia)  man  came,  or  is, 
death,  and  by  man  or  through  (dia)  man,  came,  or 
is,  the  resurrection,  and  as  in  Adam  all  die,  or  are 
dying,  so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive.  But 
how  death  came  through  Adam,  the  text  does  not 
so  clearly  teach.  But  from  necessity  it  comes 
through  him  in  some  way,  involving  us  in  its  con- 
sequences, as  does  human  depravity,  or  else  it  comes 
to  us  by  virtue  of  natural  relationships,  as  does 
natural  life,  or  as  life  and  death  both  come  to  the 
animal  world,  from  natural  relationship  to  their 
progenitors.  The  last  position,  I  take  it,  is  the 
true  one,  for  the  following  reasons : 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  115 

I.  From  the  structure  of  the  text  itself  man  in 
both  members  of  the  antithesis  is  represented,  not 
in  a  casual  or  active  relation,  but  in  a  passive  rela- 
tion to  the  words  death  and  resurrection.  Man  is 
not  active,  not  the  agent,  but  the  medium  through 
which  death  comes,  as  the  same  man  is  the  medium 
through  whom  natural  life  comes  to  all.  This  is 
the  natural  force  of  the  language  employed.  This 
conclusion  is  very  much  strengthened,  if  not  posi- 
tively confirmed,  by  the  known  facts  in  relation  to 
the  second  member  of  the  antithesis.  By  man  the 
humanity  of  Christ  came,  also  the  resurrection. 
Now,  was  Christ  as  man  the  cause,  the  author,  the 
agent  of  the  resurrection?  So  far  from  this,  he 
was  actually  the  first  fruits  of  it,  the  first  subject  of 
it,  the  first  man  raised  from  the  dead.  He  was 
raised  up  from  the  dead  by  the  glory  of  the  Father, 
the  resurrection  came  by  an  agent,  a  power  outside  of 
his  humanity;  and  just  because  he  was  the  first 
fruits  of  it,  and  in  his  human  nature  related  to  all 
mankind,  the  resurrection  comes  to  all  men.  This 
is  exactly  the  sense  in  which  the  resurrection  came 
by  or  through  him  to  all  men.  This  throws  a  flood 
of  light  upon  the  first  member  of  the  antithesis. 
Adam  was  not  the  cause,  or  the  author,  or  the 
agent  that  brought  natural  death  into  the  world, 
but  the  medium  through  which  death  comes  to  all, 
just  as  through  him  life  comes  to  all.  The  source 
both  of  life  and  death  was  outside  of  himself,  and 
just  as  the  humanity  was  the  subject  of  the  resur- 
rection, and  not  the  author,  but  the  medium  of  it 
to  all  other  men.    So  Adam  was  not  the  author  of 


V 


1 16  ANTHROPOLOG  Y. 

death,  but  the  subject,  and  being  the  first  of  his 
kind  is  the  medium  of  it  to  all  other  men.  If  this 
reasoning  be  true,  then  natural  death  is  not  the 
penalty  of  Adam's  sin. 

2.  The  22d  verse,  torture  it  as  we  may,  cannot 
by  exegesis,  or  logic,  or  anything  else,  be  made  to 
teach  a  contrary  doctrine.  "As  in  Adam  all  die  so 
in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive."  The  preposi- 
tion "  in  "  denotes  intimate  relationship.  The  idea 
is  by  virtue  of  this  close  relationship  between  "  all  " 
and  "Adam,"  all  die,  just  as  by  this  relationship  all 
live  or  receive  life  in  or  through  him.  By  a  simi- 
lar relationship  between  the  same  all  and  Christ  all 
shall  be  made  alive,  raised  to  life.  As  Christ's  hu- 
man life  is  not  the  author  of  the  resurrection  life, 
so  Adam  is  not  the  author  of  natural  death.  Christ 
being  the  first  fruits  of  the  resurrection  life  is  the 
pledge  and  prelude  of  the  universal  resurrection. 
So  Adam  being  the  first  mortal  man  is  the  pledge 
and  prelude  of  universal  human  death. 

3.  This  view  of  the  subject  is  very  much  favored 
by  a  comparison  of  this  text  (i  Cor.  xv.  21,  22) 
with  Romans  v.  12-19. 

In  the  latter  the  first  and  second  Adam  are  con- 
trasted as  to  their  respective  influence  upon  the  des- 
tiny of  mankind  in  relation  to  moral  and  spiritual 
things.  The  former  brings  sin,  spiritual  death, 
and  condemnation;  the  latter  brings  righteousness 
and  spiritual  life.  Adam's  activity  is  expressed  by 
the  words  "  transgression,"  "offense,"  "sinned." 
These  words  all  denote  personal  and  voluntary  ac- 
tivity.    The  activity  of  Christ  is  implied  in  the 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  117 

whole  mediatorial  work  by  which  he  set  aside  the 
consequences  of  the  spiritual  death  and  condemna- 
tion. Both,  by  their  voluntary  activity,  exert  a 
powerful  influence  upon  mankind.  One  is  the 
source  of  spiritual  death,  the  other  is  the  source  of 
spiritual  life.  But  in  i  Cor.  xv.  21,  22,  the  first 
and  second  Adam  are  contrasted  in  relation  to 
physical  death  and  the  resurrection.  Here  both 
are  profoundly  passive,  are  far  from  being  authors 
or  agents.  They  are  the  non-active  mediums 
respectively,  of  the  power  of  death  and  the  power 
of  the  resurrection.  If  Adam's  personal  arid 
voluntary  activity  brought  into  the  world  physical 
death,  as  it  confessedly  did  spiritual  death,  why  is 
not  the  important  fact  expressed,  or  at  least  implied, 
in  this  long  discussion  of  natural  death  and  the 
resurrection  ? 

In  Romans  this  authorship  is  repeated  over  and 
over.  But  in  Paul's  long  argument  on  the  resur- 
rection, in  which  the  words  "dead"  and  "death" 
are  used  about  twenty-three  times,  all  referring  to 
natural  death,  it  is  never  once  said,  nor  is  it  ob- 
scurely implied,  that  he  had  any  active  participa- 
tion in  the  introduction  of  this  physical  death  into 
the  world.  Is  not  this  a  most  remarkable  fact,  if 
death  physical  and  death  spiritual  and  death 
eternal  are  the  penalty  of  the  Adamic  sin  ?  The 
most  rational  explanation  of  this  remarkable  silence 
is  that  Paul  did  not  feel  himself  called  upon  to 
explain   what  did  not  exist. 

Romans  viii.  10:       "And    if  Christ  be  in    you, 
the  body   {soma)  is  dead,   {nekroti)  because  of  sin 


Il8  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

{df} ainartian)\  but  the  spirit  is  liYe  because  of  right- 
eousness."    The  meaning  of  the  words,  "the  body 
is  dead  because  of  sin,"  is  in  doubt. 
Two  explanations  are  proposed : 

1.  "The  body  indeed  is  dead,  i.  e.,  must  die,  is 
obnoxious  to  death."     (Hodge  in  loco.) 

2.  The  body  of  those  in  whom  Christ  dwells  is 
dead,  or  inactive  as  to,  or  in  reference  to,  sin  in  a 
sense  analagous  to  that  in  which  the  unregenerate 
soul  is  dead  to  righteousness.  Authorities  differ, 
some  advocating  the  first  and  some  the  second  ex- 
planation. The  subsequent  context  of  chap.  viii. 
seems  to  favor  the  first  explanation.  The  preced- 
ing context  seems  to  favor  the  second.  The  argu- 
ments in  favor  of  the  first  are  substantially  as 
follows : 

(a)  That  the  word  *'body"  very  rarely,  if  ever, 
has  the  sense  of  the  word  "flesh"  as  used  in  the 
context,  and  therefore  does  not  favor  the  idea  that 
the  word  "dead"  means  non-activity,  or  the  non- 
enjoyment  as  to  sin;  it  must,  therefore,  refer  to  nat- 
ural death. 

(b)  That  the  nth  verse  refers  to  the  resurrection 
of  the  mortal  bodies,  and  that  fact  requires  us  to 
believe  that  the  loth  verse  refers  to  natural  death. 
This  explanation  is  plausible  and  in  strict  harmony 
with  the  theory  of  the  causative  relation  of  sin  and 
natural  death.  But  the  argument  is  not  satisfac- 
tory. 

I.  It  takes  undue  liberty  with  the  word  "dead." 
"The  body  is  dead"  means  the  body  must  die,  is 
obnoxious  to  death.     We  have  just  as  much  exe- 


Sin  and  physical  evil.  119 

getical  authority  to  say  that  the  words,  "  the  spirit 
is  life,"  in  the  next  member  of  the  sentence,  means 
the  spirit  must  become  life,  is  obnoxious  to  life.  • 
This  would  make  the  entire  proposition  unintelli- 
gible. Paul,  in  this  verse,  speaks  of  what  exists 
now,  and  not  of  what  will  be  hereafter.  We  un- 
derstand that  there  is  a  material  diflference  between 
a  dead  body  and  a  body  that  is  only  obnoxious  to 
death,  the  difference  being  just  that  of  the  living 
and  the  dead.  Do  the  sacred  writers  predicate 
death,  either  physical  or  spiritual,  of  any  that  are 
not  dead?  I  think  not.  This,  then,  is  a  liberty 
taken  with  the  word  "death"  not  according  to 
usage  or  any  other  authority  known  to  me. 

2.  The  argument  receives  almost  its  whole  force 
from  a  misapprehension  of  the  relation  existing  be- 
tween the  words  "flesh  "  and  "  body."  Dr.  Hodge 
urges  that  to  use  the  words  as  equivalents  is  contrary 
to  usage,  and  that  the  word  "body,"  in  the  sense 
of  flesh,  never  has  the  word  "  dead  "  joined  with  it. 
Now,  it  is  certainly  true,  if  the  doctrine  of  realism 
is  not  true,  that  the  abstract  and  the  concrete  are 
not  equivalents,  and  that  the  word  "  dead  "  is  never 
united  with  an  abstract  word,  nor  with  any  con- 
crete word,  used  as  its  equivalents,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  abstract  has  no  existence  independ- 
ent of  the  concrete.  Hence  we  should  be  very 
careful  not  to  join  the  word  "dead"  with  nonen- 
tity. The  body  and  flesh  are  often  used  as  syno- 
nyms in  the  New  Testament,  notably  in  reference 
to  the  Lord's  Supper,  and  in  reference  to  his  body 
in  the  tomb.    In  such  cases  the  word  flesh  is  taken 


I20  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

in  the  concrete  sense,  j  ust  as  is  the  body.  But  in  the 
context,  verses  4-9,  Paul  uses  the  word  in  the  sense 
,  of  sensuality,  or,  as  Dr.  Hodge  expresses  it,  "  cor- 
rupt nature."  But  the  terms  are  both  pure  ab- 
stracts, and  have  no  existence  except  in  the  con- 
crete. It  is  the  inheritance  of  all  human  beings, 
and  exists  only  in  the  concrete.  It  can  be  destroy- 
ed only  in  the  concrete,  or  in  the  mind  and  body. 
In  order  to  complete  salvation  according  to 
Paul's  conception,  four  things  are  necessary^ : 

1.  The  death  of  the  human  spirit  as  to  sin. 

2.  The  new  life  of  the  spirit  as  to  righteousness. 

3.  The  death  of  the  body  as  to  sin. 

4.  The  quickening  of  the  mortal  body  by  the 
spirit  that  raised  up  Christ  from  the  dead. 

The  first  is  implied  by  the  second,  because  there 
can  be  no  life  as  to  righteousness  without  death  as 
to  sin. 

The  second  and  third  are  expressed  in  the  text. 
The  fourth  is  fully  brought  out  in  verse  13.  The 
first  three  are  conditional  upon  union  with  Christ. 
"If  Christ  be  in  you,"  these  follow  as  results  of 
that  indwelling,  and  are  consequently  true  of  all 
believers.  The  fourth,  or  the  quickening  of  the 
mortal  body,  is  not  accomplished  till  the  resurrec- 
tion, when  the  complex  salvation  of  the  body  and 
mind  is  secured.  This  is  the  Pauline  method  of 
the  process  from  death  to  life.  It  meets  fully  the 
demands  of  the  preceding  and  the  succeeding  con- 
texts, and  fully  harmonizes  with  the  general  teach- 
ings of  the  apostles.  If  further  evidence  be  re- 
quired to  prove  that  Paul,  when  he  says  the  body 


S/N  AND  PHYSICAL  EVIL.  1 21 

is  dead  {di  ^  amartian)^  does  not  refer  to  human 
mortality,  but  to  death  as  to  sin,  we  have  it  abund- 
antly in  the  fact  that  this  death  is  in  consequence 
of  vital  spiritual  union  with  Christ.  "If  Christ  be 
in  you  the  body  is  dead."  Now,  it  is  gratuitous  to 
say  that  natural  death,  or  mortality,  is  in  any  sense 
conditioned  upon  union  with  Christ,  or  in  any 
manner  a  consequence  of  it.  If  this  were  true,  then 
none  but  those  in  whom  Christ  dwells  could  ever 
experience  natural  death.  But  all  die  physically, 
whether  Christ  dwells  in  them  or  not.  But  only 
those  in  whom  Christ  dwells  are  dead  because  of 
sin  {di  ^ armartian)^  therefore  this  is  not  physical 
death. 

Other  grave  objections  might  be  presented  to  the 
mortality  theory  with  the  same  effect,  but  enough 
has  been  said  to  show  that  Rom.  viii.  lo  does  not 
teach,  and  cannot  be  so  tortured  as  to  be  made  to 
teach,  that  human  mortality  is  a  penal  consequence 
of  sin. 

I  have  now  briefly  noted  the  principal  text  relied 
upon  to  prove  the  penality  of  physical  death  and 
all  physical  sufferings.  I  confess  myself  utterly 
surprised  at  the  shallowness  of  the  authority  upon 
which  the  theory  rests.  If  I  have  not  deceived 
myself,  the  very  texts  relied  upon  for  proof  of  the 
doctrine,  when  carefully  considered,  actually  dis- 
prove it.  I  therefore  might  have  declined  further 
discussion.  But  as  you  probably  wish  to  know 
what  more  could  be  said  in  favor  of  the  negation  of 
the  question  I  will,  in  a  succeeding  chapter,  briefly 
refer  to  a  number  of  other  facts. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

SIN,  TRANSGRESSION  AND  INIQUITY. 

ARE  physical  death  and  all  human  suflferings  the 
.  the  penal  consequences  of  Adam's  sin?  I 
deem  the  following  facts  irreconcilable  with 
the  aflfirmative : 

I.  Supposing  the  rates  of  increase  in  the  human 
family  had  not  sin  been  introduced,  to  have  been 
equal  to  what  it  really  has  been,  the  population  of  the 
globe  would  have  been  already  one  hundred  times 
greater  than  it  now  is,  and  in  process  of  innumer- 
able years  would  have  constituted  a  bulk  of  living 
humanity  a  thousand  times  greater  than  the  globe 
itself.  Such  is  the  legitimate  consequence  of  the 
theory. 

Augustine,  who  did  more  than  any  other  man  to 
fasten  the  absurd  theory  upon  the  church,  seemed 
to  apprehend  some  trouble  on  this  score,  and  sug- 
gested that  possibly  at  a  suitable  time  sinless  hu- 
man bodies  might  be  spiritualized,  and  then 
removed  out  of  the  way  of  their  successors. 

Others,  too,  in  contemplating  the  difficulty  re- 
sulting from  this  theory,  have  sought  relief  in  the 
same  way.  They  do  not  tell  us,  however,  as  far  as 
I  have  seen,  how  the  spiritualization  is  to  relieve 
the  difficulty,  whether  by  diminishing  human 
bodies  to  infinitesimal  points,  or  by  transforming 
them  into  essentially  spiritual   entities,  and  then 


Sin  and  iniquity.  123 

constitute  them  the  occupants  of  a  super-sensible 
and  super- sensual  sphere  of  being.  If  the  former 
is  the  idea,  it  is  proper  to  remark  that  it  does  not 
obviate,  but  only  a  little  obscures,  the  difficulty. 
For  with  any  ratio  of  increase,  however  small  the 
bodies  might  be,  in  the  course  of  an  infinity  of 
years,  the  same  startling  results  would  be  reached, 
as  indicated  above.  This  latter  idea,  i.  e.,  trans- 
formation into  spiritual  entities,  as  in  the  resurrec- 
tion, would,  I  suppose,  meet  with  more  general  favor. 
Now,  what  astonishes  me  above  measure  is  that 
Augustine,  as  well  as  his  retailers,  did  not  perceive 
that  his  mode  of  obviating  the  difficulty  was  an 
abandonment  of  his  theory  itself,  or,  which  is  the 
same  thing,  two  propositions  are  affirmed  that  are 
mutually  self-destructive,  i.  e.,  that  an  animal  body 
was  created  immortal,  but  it  became  immortal  only 
by  spiritualization. 

What  is  mortal  is  necessarily  mutable  in  its  mode 
of  being;  what  is  immortal  is  necessarily  immuta- 
ble in  its  mode  of  being.  All  organic  beings  are 
changeable,  and  therefore  mortal.  All  inorganic 
entities  are  unchangeable  in  their  mode  of  being, 
though  material  things  may  be  changed  in  form. 
At  least  we  know  of  no  instance  in  the  realm  of 
nature  or  of  mind  of  a  departure  from  these  funda- 
mental truths,  and  such ,  a  departure  is  scarcely 
conceivable.  The  theory  assumes  that  the  allwise 
Creator  made  the  human  body  immortal,  and  then, 
because  man  sinned,  by  a  fiat,  made  it  mortal. 

God,  in  the  domain  of  matter  and  mind,  works 
up,  not  down.     He  does  not  begin  with  the  im- 


124  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

mortal  and  work  to  the  mortal.  He  takes  no  back- 
ward steps.  Onward  and  upward  is  the  line  of 
movement.  Moral  degradation  is  possible,  as  the 
world's  history  sadly  proves.  But  degradation  from 
one  mode  of  existence  to  another,  as  from  immor- 
tality to  mortality,  is  incredible.  Nature,  speak- 
ing through  her  multitudinous  throats,  utters  an 
imperative  protest.  The  intuitions  of  reason  reject 
it,  and  God's  word,  I  venture  to  say,  never  author- 
ized it.  Augustine  and  others  asserted  it,  and 
bolstered  the  figment  with  a  few  misapplied  texts, 
and  the  world  blindly  assented.  If  it  should  be 
replied  that  there  was  no  degrading  fiat  transmut- 
ing the  immortal  into  the  mortal,  but  the  change 
was  wrought  by  the  natural  operation  of  the  laws 
that  subordinate  the  physical  to  the  moral,  the 
animal  to  the  intellectual;  just  as  the  soul  by  a 
state  of  sin  passes  from  a  state  of  spiritual  life  to 
a  state  of  spiritual  death;  it  is  sufficient  to  reply 
that  sin  did  not  change  the  soul's  mode  of  exist- 
ence, but  its  moral  qualities.  Sin  took  away  no 
old  faculties,  and  added  no  new  ones  to  the  soul, 
which  was  as  truly  immortal  subsequent  to  sin  as 
before  it. 

But  the  theory  in  question  assumes  a  change  in 
the  mode  of  existence — a  change  from  the  immor- 
tal to  the  mortal,  and  from  one  set  of  adaptations 
and  accommodations  to  another  set  wholly  differ- 
ent. It  is  admissible  I  suppose,  for  illustration,  to 
refer  to  the  fallen  angels,  Satan  in  particular,  he 
being  the  first  and  greatest  of  sinners. 

He,  as  all  the  angels,  is  supposed  to  have  a  spir- 


S/N  AND  INIQUITY.  125 

itual  body,  as  well  as  the  saints,  in  the  resurrection 
state.  Did  his  sin  make  his  body  mortal  ?  But  if 
Adam's  sin  made  his  body  mortal,  why  did  not  Sa- 
tan's sin  make  his  body  mortal  ?  Will  it  be  said 
Satan's  body  was  spiritual  while  Adam's  was  ani- 
mal, and  that  this  is  the  cause  of  the  difference  ? 
Partly  right  and  partly  wrong.  Satan's  body  was 
spiritual,  and  therefore  immortal.  But  Adam's 
body  was  animal,  and  therefore  mortal.  An  immor- 
tal animal  !  Omnivorous  in  kind  by  creation,  and 
living  on  vegetables  and  fruits  and  the  flesh  of  oth- 
er animals,  liable  to  hunger,  heat  and  cold,  and 
sleeping  when  occasion  required,  and  yet  immortal? 
Marvelous  indeed.  These  are  not  the  characteris- 
tics of  immortality.  Immortal  creatures  do  not 
subsist  on  such  crude  material,  are  not  affected  by 
the  necessities  of  a  fickle  climate,  do  not  grow  wea- 
ry, never  sleep  as  Adam  did  before  he  sinned,  or  if 
they  do  heaven  is  not  what  we  are  expecting.  An 
immortal  animal  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  mor- 
tality was  a  concreation  with  the  first  man.  All 
the  facts  seem  to  show  that  the  idea  of  a  possible 
immortality  conditioned  upon  obedience  is  a  worth- 
less foundation.  Obedience  expends  itself  upon 
the  spiritual  and  can  affect  the  physical  only  slight- 
ly, arid  not  in  such  a  way  as  to  metamorphose  the 
mortal  into  the  immortal,  the  animal  body  into  a 
spiritual  body.  But  it  may  be  pertinently  inquired  : 
If  Adam  had  not  sinned,  would  not  his  body  at  a 
suitable  time  been  either  spiritualized  or  superseded 
by  a  spiritual  or  resurrection  body  without  the  in- 
tervention of  death,  as  seems  to  have  been  the  case 


126  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

with  Elijah  and  Enoch  ?  I  reply,  it  is  highly  prob- 
able, but  for  sin  Adam's  body  would  have  been  spir- 
itualized and  fitted  for  all  the  felicities  of  a  higher 
life  as  we  suppose  were  the  bodies  of  Elijah  and 
Enoch.  But  in  that  case  the  immortality  would 
have  come,  not  from  the  original  creation,  but  from 
spiritualization  just  as  the  immortality  of  Christ'5 
body,  who  was  as  sinless  as  ever  Adam  was,  resulted 
not  from  his  sinlessness  but  from  its  quickenings  oi 
spiritualization.  This  is  the  point  to  be  essentially 
noted,  that  the  immortality  comes  neither  from  the 
creation  nor  from  the  sinlessness,  but  from  the  spir- 
itualization. We  know  little  about  these  translations 
and  need  not  speculate  much  concerning  them. 
They  were  evidently  equivalent  in  eflfect  to  death 
and  the  resurrection.  That  is,  death  in  the  sense 
of  deprivation  of  an  animal  nature,  and  resurrec- 
tion in  the  sense  of  spiritualization,  or  the  imparta- 
tion  of  a  new  body.  We  can  conceive  of  these  two 
distinct  events  as  synchronal,  as  they  evidently  were 
in  the  case  of  Enoch  and  Elijah,  or  as  separated  by 
a  greater  or  less  interval  of  time,  as  in  the  case  of 
Christ,  and  possibly  in  the  case  of  mankind  gener- 
ally. But  in  all  cases  bodily  immortality  comes 
neither  from  creation  or  sinlessness,  but  from  super- 
natural spiritualization. 

2.  "  Now  this  I  say,  brethren,  that  flesh  and  blood 
cannot  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God,  neither  doth 
corruption  inherit  incorruption. " — i  Cor.  xv.  50. 
The  context  clearly  shows  that  the  kingdom  of  God 
here  means  the  church  in  the  resurrection  state. 
The  text  alleges  that  flesh  and  blood  cannot  inherit 


SIN  AND  INIQUITY.  127 

this  kingdom,  cannot  enter  it — must  of  necessity 
be  excluded  from  it.  But  the  body  of  Adam  was 
as  truly  flesh  and  blood,  a  natural  or  animal  or  cor- 
ruptible, and  therefore  a  mortal,  body  before  the  fall 
as  it  was  afterwards,  or  as  ours  are  now.  Hence  it 
is  plain  that  his  sin  did  not  make  his  body  natural, 
or  as  the  word  implies,  animal,  did  not  change  it 
from  an  immortal  to  a  mortal  body.  His  sin  did  not 
bring  natural  death  into  the  world  as  a  punishment 
for  sin. 

3.  * '  Christ  hath  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of 
the  law,  being  made  a  curse  for  us." — Gal.  iii.  13. 

If  natural  death  is  the  curse  of  the  law,  or  any 
part  of  it,  then  Christ  hath  not  redeemed  us  from 
the  curse  of  the  law,  or  at  least  not  from  the  whole  \ 
curse,  for  believers  are  not  exempt  from  natural  y 
death.  It  hence  follows  that  Christ  suffered  a  part 
of  the  curse  and  every  believer  a  part.  This  flatly 
contradicts  the  text. 

"He  was  made  sin  (a  sin  offering)  for  us." — 2 
Cor.  V.  21.  If  natural  death  is  a  penal  consequence 
of  sin,  then  Christ,  as  a  sin  offering,  does  not  take 
away  the  penal  consequence  of  sin,  even  in  those 
who  are  united  to  him  by  faith. 

4.  "Christ  is  the  end  of  the  law  for  righteousness 
to  everyone  that  believeth."     The  doctrine  of  this 
text  is  that  Christ  saves  the  believer  from  the  penal 
consequences  of  sin,   but  he  does  not  save  them  V" 
from  physical  death, 

5.  That  natural  death  is  not  the  penalty  of  Ad- 
am's sin,  or  of  any  other  sin,  is  both  proved  and 
exemplified  in  the  person  of  Christ,    The  first  and 


128  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

second  Adam  were  equally  men.  Adam's  concreated 
fcioliness,  if  we  choose  to  call  uprightness  holiness, 
was  only  negative.  Christ  was  not  only  innocent 
but  properly  and  actively  holy.  He  therefore,  ac- 
cording to  the  theory,  ought  to  have  had  a  stronger 
guaranty  against  physical  death  than  had  Adam. 
Yet  he,  in  his  sinless  state,  was  mortal.  He  actu- 
ally died.  Will  it  be  said  Christ  died  for  the  sins 
of  others  ?  I  reply,  this  is  true  ;  (but  the  sins  of 
others  were  not  the  cause  of  his  mortality,  but  the 
occasion  of  his  death?)  This  is  evident  from  the 
fact  that  if  he  had  not  been  mortal  he  could  not 
have  died  on  any  account.  To  say  it  is  possible 
for  any  immortal  being  to  die  is  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  I  see  no  method  of  bending  these  stern 
facts  into  harmony  with  the  penal  theory  of  death. 

Christ,  the  only  sinless  human  being  that  ever 
drew  breath,  since  the  fall  of  man,  was  created 
mortal  like  all  other  men,  and  yet  we  are  required 
to  believe  that  mortality  is  a  penal  curse  of  Adam's 
sin  ! 

6.  The  penal  theory  of  natural  death  is  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection.  The 
resurrection  gives  to  men,  in  lieu  of  their  natural, 
corrupt,  dishonored  bodies,  spiritual,  incorruptible 
and  glorious  bodies,  in  every  respect  like  unto 
Christ's  glorious  body.  This  exchange  of  the 
worse  for  the  better  does  not  agree  with  our 
notion  of  a  penal  curse,  as  the  theory  under  consid- 
eration affirms  death  to  be.  Is  it  in  fact  a  curse  to 
take  a  man  out  of  a  worthless  and  dilapidated  mud 
wall  hovel  and  put  him  in  a  mansion  ;  to  pull  down 


S/N  AND  INIQUITY.  I29 

his  rickety  earthly  tabernacle  and  give  him  a  house 
not  made  with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens  ?  This 
looks  to  me  far  more  like  benefaction  than  male- 
faction, more  like  blessing  than  cursing.  I  like 
the  familiar  sentiment, 

Death  is  the  gate  to  endless  joy, 
And  dying  is  but  going  home. 

7.  The  assumption  that  all  human  sufferings  are 
the  proper  punishment  of  sin  in  the  person  of  the 
sufferer,  pretermits  all  distinction  between  physical 
and  moral  law,  confounding  things  which  are  in 
themselves  essentially  distinct.  All  physical  suffer- 
ing results  from  the  violation  of  physical  laws. 
This  violation  may  be  the  act  of  the  sufferer,  as  in 
the  case  of  imprudent  eating,  exposure,  etc.,  or  the 
suffering  may  be  brought  upon  the  person  by  the 
act  of  another,  as  in  the  case  of  murder,  and  other 
lesser  injuries,  or  by  the  excesses  of  ancestors,  as  is 
often  the  case,  or  by  ordinary  providence,  as  in 
case  of  accidents  and  epidemics,  or  by  judicial 
Providence,  as  in  the  destruction  of  Herod  Antipas, 
or  the  Sodomites. 

Moral  evils,  of  course,  result  from  the  violation 
of  moral  law.  The  moral  and  the  physical  often 
overlap  each  other.  All  acts  put  forth  in  violation 
of  physical  la'w,  for  purposes  of  sinful  pleasure, 
gratification  or  advantage,  result  in  both  moral  and 
physical  evil,  as  do  all  sorts  of  excesses  and  dissi- 
pation. In  such  cases  it  naturally  follows  that  the 
individual,  while  enduring  the  penalty  of  violated 
physical  law,  also  suffers  the  penal  consequence  of 
his  violation  of  moral  law,  and  consequently,  while 


I30  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

writhing  in  physical  pain,  may  at  the  same  time 
feel  the  sting  of  penal  fires  in  the  domain  of  his 
moral  being  in  the  sense  of  moral  degradation  and 
shame,  remorse,  unmitigated  guilt. 

But  notwithstanding  this  intimate  relation  be- 
tween them,  they  are  not  blended  or  confounded, 
but  remain  separate  and  distinct. 

The  violations  of  moral  law  never  bring  physical 
retribution.  Though  the  same  act  may  be  a  viola- 
tion of  both  laws.  Unless  we  make  the  discrimi- 
nation and  hold  it,  we  will  be  logically  forced  to 
assert  conclusions  as  false  as  they  are  revolting.  A 
very  large  per  cent  of  the  human  family  destroy 
their  health,  bring  on  suffering  and  death  by  im- 
prudence or  through  ignorance. 

Parents  in  like  manner  often  destroy  the  health 
of  their  children,  and  the  best  of  physicians  that  of 
their  patients.  Now,  are  we  prepared  to  say  in  the 
light  of  such  facts  that  all  violations  of  physical 
law  are  of  necessity  violations  of  moral  law,  or  are 
sins  in  the  Bible  sense  of  the  word,  which  they 
must  be  if  all  possible  human  sufferings  are  pun- 
ishments for  sins?  But  of  whose  sins  are  all 
these  sufferings  the  punishment?  The  theory 
says  all  suffering  is  a  punishment  of  sin  in  the 
person  of  the  sufferer.  A  man,  though  he  may 
be  one  of  the  purest  of  earth,  by  a  little  impru- 
dence may  ruin  his  health,  or  he  may  lose  his 
life  by  the  hand  of  another,  by  an  epidemic, 
by  accident,  or,  like  good  old  Simeon,  he  may 
pray  to  die,  and  God  in  answer  may  providen- 
tially call  him  away.    The  little  infant,  though  it 


SIN  AND  INIQUITY  .  131 

never  had  a  rational  thought,  often  suflfers  a  fearful 
death.  In  all  such  instances  shall  we  say  that  the 
suflfering  is  a  punishment  for  violations  of  moral 
law  ?  This  shocks  common  sense  and  indicates  the 
fallacy  of  the  doctrine, 

8.  The  theory  in  question  contradicts  all  rational 
views  of  many  facts  stated  in  the  Bible. 

I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be  reconciled  with  the 
facts  in  the  case  of  Job.  God  testified  that  there 
was  none  like  him  in  the  earth,  a  perfect  and  an 
upright  man.  One  who  feared  God  and  avoided 
evil,  yet  he  was  more  severely  afflicted  than  any 
other  man.  Here  we  have  the  best  man  in  the 
world,  and  yet  the  most  afflicted  man.  But  accord- 
ing to  the  theory,  all  these  afflictions  are  the  pun- 
ishment of  his  sin.  God's  testimony  makes  him 
the  best  man,  but  the  logic  of  the  penal  theory 
makes  him  the  worst  man.  In  fact.  Job's  comfort- 
ers were  strict  penalists.  They  boldly  defended  the 
doctrine  against  which  I  protest.  They  could  find 
no  cause  for  Job's  suffering  but  in  his  secret  sins. 
Their  philosophy  was  the  so-called  orthodox  theory 
of  the  day.  This,  too,  was  Job's  philosophy,  but 
he  could  not  reconcile  the  facts  with  his  philoso- 
phy. He  was  conscious  of  innocency  from  tlie 
great  sins  of  which  his  philosophy  convicted  him. 
•  Hence  his  utter  embarrassment  and  confusion.  His 
consciousness  testified  to  his  innocence,  but  his  the- 
ory testified  to  his  guilt,  and  between  the  two  his 
afflictions  were  inexplicable.  All  the  foolish  things 
he  said  were  provoked  by  his  false  philosophy;  nor 
was  he  relieved  from  his  troubles  till  the  young 


132  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

man  Eliphas,  demolished  his  false  philosophy,  and 
referred  his  troubles  to  the  allwise  but  inscrutable 
providences  of  God. 

This  reference  of  all  suffering  to  individual  sins 
was  also  the  philosophy  of  the  pagan  world.  This 
fact  finds  a  striking  illustration  in  the  conduct  of 
the  inhabitants  of  Miletus,  when  Paul  was  cast 
upon  their  coast  and  shipwrecked.  They  first 
thought  him  a  good  man,  then  because  a  viper 
fastened  upon  his  hand  they  thought  him  a  mur- 
derer escaping  from  justice,  but  overtaken  by  the 
fates;  then,  because  he  did  not  fall  down  dead,  they 
thought  he  was  a  god.  All  this  vacillation  result- 
ed from  a  struggle  to  harmonize  facts  with  a  false 
theory.  The  theory  is  absolutely  refuted  by  the 
facts  in  the  case  of  the  rich  man  and  Lazarus.  In 
fact,  it  seems  to  be  a  part  of  the  design,  if  not  the 
chief  purpose,  of  this  scripture  to  demolish  the 
false  reasoning  of  men  in  regard  to  this  absurd  the- 
ory.    Christ  here  teaches  three  important  lessons : 

(i)  That  a  man  may  be  eminently  pious  and  yet 
be  greatly  afiiicted  in  every  sense.  To  such,  death 
is  a  blessing  instead  of  a  curse. 

(2)  The  man  may  be  a  great  sinner  and  yet  be 
blessed  with  all  conceivable  external  good  in  this 
world. 

/    (3)  That  the  moral  government  of  God  is  not 

-n// administered  in   this  world  according  to  the  prin- 

;   ciples    of    exact   retribution,    but    is   disciplinary 

*■  in    its    methods   of  administration.     The    case    of 

the  blind    man    found    in    the   temple   contradicts 

the   doctrine   under  review.      ' '  Master,    who   did 


S/N  AND  INIQUITY.  133 

sin,  this  man  or  his  parents,  that  he  was  born 
blind?"  This  was  the  question  asked  by  the 
disciples.  Jesus  replied,  "Neither  hath  this  man 
sinned  or  his  parents,  but  that  the  work  of  God 
should  be  made  manifest  in  him."  (a)  The  dis- 
ciples assumed  that  sin  caused  the  blindness  of 
this  man.  (b)  Christ  denied  the  assumption  flatly 
and  explicitly,  (c)  But  he  alleges  that  his  blind- 
ness was  providential,  and  for  a  sufficient  reason, 
(d)  Hence  the  affliction  was  not  a  punishment  for 
his  sin,  but  was  purely  administrative,  not  of  the 
wrath  but  of  the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  God. 

Probably  without  this  dispensation  of  providence 
this  man  never  would  have  come  to  a  saving  knowl- 
edge of  the  truth,  and  the  world  would  have  been 
left  without  the  benefit  of  this  clue  to  thousands  of 
similar  providential  occurrences.  Many  other  sim- 
ilar facts  might  be  stated,  which  seem  to  be  adverse 
to  the  theory.  I  will  consider  in  another  chapter 
other  aspects  of  the  subject  which  favor  the  same 
conclusion. 


y^ 


CHAPTER  IX. 

PHYSICAL  DEATH  AND  RESURRECTION  NOT  CONSE- 
QUENCES OF  SIN. — LIFE  AND  DEATH. 

WHAT  life  is  in  itself  we  do  not  know.  We 
can  know  only  some  of  its  characteristics. 
Facts  as  apprehended  by  us  authorize  the 
affirmation  that  there  is  an  infinite  life  which  is  the 
source  of  all  creature  life.  All  creature  life  is  finite 
life,  and  is  a  product  or  derivation  from  infinite 
life.  Infinite  life  is  exclusively  the  property  of 
God.  It  is  unoriginated,  underived,  and  intermina- 
ble. Finite  life  is  of  two  distinct  kinds,  spiritual 
and  physical ;  but  both  have  their  source  in  infinite 
life.  The  expression,  spiritual  life,  is  ambiguous — 
may  mean  existence  as  a  spiritual  entity,  and  as 
such  is  imperishable  or  indestructible,  partaking  in 
this  respect  of  the  nature  of  infinite  life,  e.  g.,  all 
spirits  created  in  the  image  of  God,  whether  good 
or  bad,  are  immortal.  But  the  words  spiritual  life, 
as  used  in  the  Scriptures,  does  not  express  the  idea 
of  mere  existence  or  being,  but  rather  denotes  the 
state  or  quality  of  spiritual  creatures.  Bad  spirits 
have  everlasting  life  in  the  sense  of  persistent 
being,  but  are  destitute  of  spiritual  life  in  the  sense 
of  a  state  of  fellowship  with  God. 

2.  We  know  little  more  of  death  than  we  do  of 
life.     We  know,  however,  that  it  is  the  negation  of 


Life  and  Death.  135 

life,  or  is  in  some  sense  the  destruction  of  life.  All 
living  material  organisms,  as  plants  and  animals, 
seem  to  be  destined  to  resolution  into  primitive  and 
inorganic  matter.  It  is  not  the  primitive  and  con-  -^ 
stituent  material  that  is  destroyed,  but  only  the 
organisms  and  their  functions  or  offices.  Such 
organisms  undergo  continual  changes  in  the  incon- 
stituent  elements.  These  are  not  the  same  for  two 
consecutive  moments.  The  process  of  decay  or 
waste  is  ever  going  on,  and  unless  this  waste  is 
more  than  compensated  by  the  incorporation  of  new 
matter  there  can  be  no  growth;  and  unless  it  is 
fully  compensated  there  is  actual  decay.  This  decay 
or  disintegration  is  death,  incipient  death  we  may 
call  it,  but  real  nevertheless,  because  it  is  the  trans- 
mutation of  living  into  dead  and  inorganic  matter. 
Hence  it  is  literally  true  that  material  organisms 
begin  to  die  in  this  sense  the  moment  they  begin 
to  live;  and,  of  course,  life  abides  only  so  long  as 
the  new  supply  compensates  the  loss,  or  the  abso- 
lute suspension  of  the  supply  results  in  death,  or 
the  dissolution  of  the  organism.  But  this  neces- 
sary supply  is  dependent  upon  so  many  conditions, 
both  external  and  internal  to  the  organism,  that 
life  is  in  constant  peril.  An  injury  or  impairment 
of  a  vital  organ,  as  the  lungs,  the  heart,  the 
stomach,  the  kidneys,  may  render  the  organism 
incapable  of  appropriating  the  needed  supply  of 
nutriment,  and  death  must  follow;  or  the  necessary 
food  and  air  may  be  cut  off  by  various  causes,  or 
the  body  may  be  so  injured  or  mangled  by  violence 
from  without  as  to  produce  death. 


136  Anthropology. 

All  supplies  must  come  from  without.  The  or- 
ganism itself  supplies  nothing,  originates  nothing. 
Like  devouring  flames  it  does  not  furnish  the 
material  upon  which  it  subsists,  but  only  appro- 
priates what  is  within  its  reach.  If  this  external 
supply  is  cut  off,  or  for  any  cause  fails,  death  from 
starvation  necessarily  follows.  But  even  when  the 
organism  is  invaded  by  disease  and  the  external  ma- 
terials necessary  to  its  support,  such  as  air,  food  and 
raiment,  are  abundant  death  sooner  or  later  inter- 
venes through  sheer  exhaustion  of  the  vital  organs. 
Plants,  animals,  and  men,  if  not  killed  by  other 
means,  die  of  old  age.  This  seems  to  be  nature,  or 
rather  God's  inexorable  decree  concerning  all  mate- 
rial organisms.  To  this  there  are  no  known  excep- 
tions, and  none  are  believed  to  be  possible.  We 
might  as  reasonably  assume  the  existence  of  mate- 
rial heavenly  bodies  exempt  from  the  law  of  gravit>' 
as  to  assume  the  existence  of  material  organized 
bodies  exempt  from  the  liability  of  decay  and  death. 
To  say  that  man  would  have  been  an  exception 
to  the  necessity  of  dying  if  he  had  not  sinned  is  a 
violent  assumption,  not  only  without  any  proof, 
but  in  palpable  conflict  with  all  analogy  and  with 
every  science  that  sheds  any  light  on  the  subject, 
and  in  conflict  with  the  Bible  as  well. 

Another  fact  that  has  a  vital  bearing  upon  the 
question  is  that  the  life  of  all  material  organisms  is 
capable  of  perpetuation  only  through  the  nutritious 
materials  furnished  by  death.  The  flora  of  one 
period  dies  and  furnishes  plant  food  for  the  flora  of 
succeeding  periods.     The  same  is  true  of  the  fauna. 


Life  and  Death.  137 

All  material  life,  vegetable  and  animal,  subsists 
upon  the  material  furnished  by  the  death  and  de- 
composition of  preceding  organisms.  Hence  all, 
material  life  and  material  death,  in  the  present  state 
of  the  world  are  mutually  dependent.  Without 
life  there  could  be  no  death,  and  without  death  no 
perpetuation  of  life  from  one  generation  to  another. 
This  is  true  of  all  known  organisms,  unless  man  is 
the  solitary  exception.  This  admitted  fact  seems  to 
authorize  the  conclusion  that  death  is  common  to 
all  material  organic  beings,  and  that  it  is  not  the 
accident  or  the  product  of  human  sin,  but  is  an  es- 
sential part  of  the  divinely-ordained  plan  of  the 
world.  There  is  nothing  in  nature,  reason,  or  rev- 
elation indicating  that  man  is  an  exception  to  the 
universal  reign  of  physical  death. 

Perhaps  no  man  would  have  ever  conceived,  the 
idea  that  physical  death  is  a  consequence  of  sin  had 
not  the  sacred  Scriptures  associated  sin  and  death, 
making  sin  the  cause  of  death  in  some  form.  But 
we  should  remember  tliat  death  in  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures is  a  very  ambiguous  word,  having  several  dif- 
ferent contradictory  meanings,  as  physical  death — 
a  separation  of  soul  and  body,  spiritual  death — 
a  separation  of  the  soul  from  God,  a  death  in  sin  and 
a  death  unto  sin.  The  word  death,  in  these  uses 
of  the  term,  means  radically  different  states,  states 
which  are  not  dependent  one  upon  the  other.  A 
man  may  be  physically  alive  but  spiritually  dead,  or 
both  physically  and  spiritually  alive,  or  physically 
dead  and  spiritually  alive,  or  both  physically  and 
spiritually  dead. 


T38  Anthropology. 

These  well-known  facts  clearly  show  the  necessi- 
ty of  cautious  discrimination  in  fixing  upon  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  is  intended  to  be  taken  in 
any  given  text  Without  discrimination  we  are 
liable  to  deceive  ourselves  and  misinterpret  the  text 
in  which  the  word  occurs.  It  was  exactly  in  this 
way,  I  believe,  that  Augustine  deceived  himself, 
and  came  to  believe  that  not  only  physical  death, 
but  all  suflfering — all  evil,  physical  and  moral — are 
the  penal  consequences  of  sin. 

It  is  a  fact  that  all  men  are  subject  to  physical 
death,  also  a  fact  that  all  are  subject  to  spiritual 
death — are  born  in  that  state.  The  fact  that  both 
deaths  are  universal — both  have  the  same  victims — 
may  seem  to  favor  the  idea  that  both  have  the  same 
cause,  viz.,  sin.  But  it  would  be  an  illicit  inference 
to  conclude  that  because  physical  and  spiritual 
death  are  both  universal,  therefore  both  have  the 
same  cause.  Reason  is  common  to  men,  and  so  is 
a  sinful  nature  common  to  all  men,  but  these  uni- 
versal characteristics  do  not  have  the  same  cause. 
The  first  is  natural  to  man  ;  the  second  was  not  a 
concreation  of  the  first  man,  but  was  to  him  an 
accident.  So  physical  death  is  natural  to  man — he 
dies  from  a  necessity  inherent  in  his  physical  organ- 
ism ;  but  spiritual  death  is  not  a  necessity  inherent 
in  the  nature  of  spirit,  but  in  the  first  man  was  a 
necessary  result  of  a  sinful  volition  and  in  all  others 
is  an  hereditary  state.  The  fact  that  both  are  uni- 
versal is  no  proof  that  they  result  from  the  same 
cause  :  that  is,  from  the  first  sin.  The  only  author- 
ity claimed  for  the  doctrine  that  physical  death  is  a 


Life  and  Death.  139 

punishment  for  the  first  human  sin  is  a  few  texts 
of  scripture,  notably  Gen.  ii.  17  and  Rom.  v.  12. 
It  is  generally  admitted  that  the  word  "death"  in 
these  texts  includes  spiritual  death,  and  in  order  to 
make  it  include  physical  death  it  is  necessary  to 
g^ve  it  a  double  meaning  and  make  it  in  the  same 
proposition  express  two  wholly  distinct  and  inde- 
pendent ideas.  But  this  is  an  unpardonable  abuse 
of  terms  which  generates  only  darkness  and  con- 
fusion. Certainly  the  same  word  may  be  used  in 
difierent  propositions  to  express  different  ideas,  but 
the  same  word  is  never  used  in  a  given  proposition 
to  express  two  distinct  and  antithetical  ideas.  If 
the  word  death  in  any  text  expresses  spiritual  death 
it  cannot  also  express  physical  death  ;  or  if  it  ex- 
presses physical  death  then  it  cannot,  at  the  same 
time,  express  spiritual  death.  We  have  just  as 
much  authority  to  say  that  in  the  text,  John  iii.  36, 
"  He  that  believeth  on  the  Son  hath  everlasting 
life,"  the  word  "life"  has  a  double  meaning  and 
includes  both  spiritual  and  physical  life,  as  to  say 
the  word  death,  or  die,  in  Gen.  ii.  17,  or  Rom.  v. 
12,  means  both  spiritual  and  physical  death.  The 
cases  are  exactly  parallel.  But  to  so  interpret  John 
iii.  36  would  be  to  array  the  Scriptures  against 
themselves  and  contradict  the  universally  known 
fact  that  the  believers  are  no  more  exempt  from 
physical  death  than  are  the  unbelievers. 

The  most  that  can  be  fairly  said  in  support  of 
this  physical  death  theory  is  that  it  is  mere  gratuit- 
ous inference  from  a  few  texts,  an  inference  which 
puts  the  scriptures  in  irreconcilable  conflict  with 


140  Anthropology, 

all  the  revealings  of  every  science  that  bears  on 
the  subject.  But  more  than  this,  and  far  worse 
than  this,  the  doctrine  is  irreconcilable  conflict  with 
the  plain  teachings  of  many  Bible  texts,  or  with  the 
logical  implications  of  such  texts.  Conspicuous 
among  these  may  be  noted  the  following: 

I.  Ecc.  iii.  19,  20:  "For  that  which  befalleth 
the  sous  of  men  befalleth  beasts:  even  one  thing 
befalleth  them;  as  the  one  dieth  so  dieth  the  other; 
yea,  they  have  all  one  breath;  so  that  a  man  hath  no 
pre-eminence  above  a  beast;  for  all  is  vanity.  All 
go  unto  one  place :  all  are  of  the  dust  and  all  turn 
to  dust  again." 

This  text  is  sufficiently  plain,  and  its  teachings 
easily  understood.  It  teaches  that  man,  as  to  his 
liability  to  death,  is  on  exact  equality  with  the 
beast  or  the  animal  world,  or  that  death  is  just  as 
natural  to  him  as  it  is  to  beasts.  The  natural  evils 
that  befall  one  befall  the  other,  as  one  dies  so  dies 
the  other,  both  having  one  breath,  and  the  man 
has  in  this  respect  ' '  no  pre-eminence  above  a  beast. ' ' 
The  reason  assigned  for  this  equal  subjugation  of 
both  to  death  is  the  simple  fact  that  both  are  liter- 
ally dust,  and  hence  must  turn  to  dust  again.  It 
is,  I  think,  not  unsafe  to  say  that  no  discriminating 
mind  that  has  not  a  foregone  conclusion  to  support 
could,  in  the  face  of  this  text;  attribute  the  death 
of  man  and  the  death  of  the  animal  to  wholly  dif- 
ferent and  independent  causes,  or  say  that  the  death 
of  the  animal  is  due  wholly  to  its  physical  organ- 
ism and  the  death  of  man  to  Adam's  sin. 

Yet,  those  holding  the  theory  that  death  is  the 


LIFE  AND  DEATH.  141 

product  of  sin,  actually  do  this  most  unreasonable 
thing. 

This  text,  with  any  rational  interpretation  of  its 
terms,  requires  us  to  believe  that  if  sin  is  the  cause 
of  the  death  of  the  human  body  then  it  is  also  the 
cause  of  the  death  of  the  animals,  for  men  have  no 
pre-eminence  in  this  respect  above  the  beast,  for  all 
go  to  one  place  ;  all  are  of  the  dust,  and  all  return 
to  dust  again. 

Surely  no  truth  needs  to  be  more  fully  establish- 
ed by  both  science  and  revelation  than  that  phys- 
ical death  is  natural  to  man,  just  as  it  is  to  all 
physical  organisms,  and,  of  course,  was  a  funda- 
mental part  of  God's  plan  of  creation  and  adminis- 
tration of  the  world.  But  in  immediate  association 
with  this  truth  is  another,  namely,  the  resurrection 
of  the  dead,  or  the  environment  of  the  spirit  in  a 
spiritual  body  after  death. 

But  the  fact  that  man  was  created  mortal  as  to 
his  body  or  animal  nature  does  not  prove  that  his 
mind  or  spirit  is  mortal,  or  that  it  ever  experiences 
death  in  the  sense  in  which  the  body  does.  Many 
texts  teach  with  more  or  less  directness  the  spirit's 
survival  of  the  death  of  the  body.  As  we  have 
just  seen  Ecc.  iii.  19,  20  teaches  most  explicitly 
that  physical  death  is  alike  common  to  man  and  to 
beast,  and  for  the  same  causes.  But  the  21st  verse 
teaches  that  at  death  the  spirit  of  a  man  goeth  up- 
ward and  the  spirit  of  the  beast  goeth  downward  to 
the  earth.  The  two  distinct  doctrines  of  the  mor- 
tality of  the  body  and  the  immortality  of  the  spirit 
are  more  briefly  and  explicitly  taught  in  Ecc.  xii. 


142  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

7:  "Then  shall  the  dust  (the  deceased  body)  re- 
turn to  the  earth  as  it  was  and  the  spirit  to  God 
who  gave  it."  This  is  in  exact  accord  with  what 
God  said  to  Adam  in  Eden,  "Dust  thou  art  and 
unto  dust  shalt  thou  return."  Heb.  ix.  27:  "It  is 
appointed  unto  men  once  to  die,  but  after  this  the 
judgment."  This  teaches  that  death  and  judgment 
are  co-ordinate  events  in  the  history  of  man,  and 
one  as  truly  a  part  of  the  original  divine  plan  in 
relation  to  man  as  the  other.  It  also  teaches  that 
the  man,  as  to  the  mind  or  spirit,  survives  the 
death  of  the  body;  for  if  the  spirit  perishes  with 
the  body  then  after  death  there  would  be  nothing  to 
be  subject  to  judgment. 

I  have  referred  to  these  texts  (and  might  refer  to 
many  others),  not  merely  to  prove  the  immortality 
of  the  human  spirit,  but  rather  to  indicate  God's 
original  plan  or  purpose  concerning  the  nature  and 
destiny  of  human  kind.  Two  fundamental  truths 
seem  to  me  fully  established  by  these  scriptures : 

1.  That  man  was,  as  to  his  body,  created  mortal, 
and  consequently  with  the  necessity  of  physical 
death  as  inherent  in  his  bodily  nature. 

2.  That  he  was  generated  (not  created),  as  to  his 
spirit,  immortal,  in  the  image  of  God,  and  inher- 
ently incapable  of  dissolution  in  the  sense  in 
which  the  human  body  and  all  other  material  or- 
ganisms die. 

With  these  two  facts  satisfactorily  fixed  in  mind 
I  do  not  hesitate  to  advance  another  collateral 
proposition,  viz.,  that  the  resurrection  of  the  dead, 
or  its  equivalent,  was  a  fundamental   part  of  the 


LIFE  AND  DEATH.  143 

divine  purpose  or  plan  concerning  all  human  be-  \ 
ings;  hence  that  death  and  the  resurrection  are  not 
consequences  of  sin;  or  that  men  would  have  died 
and  have  risen  from  the  dead  as  really  without  the 
introduction  of  sin  into  humanity  as  with  its  intro- 
duction. If  this  proposition  is  true  it  releases  us 
from  the  painful  and  humiliating  necessity  of  be- 
lieving that  human  sin  somehow  took  the  allwise 
Creator  on  a  surprise ;  that  he  had  not  seen  the  end 
from  the  beginning;  that  his  original  plan  of  ad- 
ministration was  inadequate  for  the  purposes  for 
which  he  created  the  world,  and  that  human  sin' 
put  him  under  some  sort  of  necessity  of  revising 
and  materially  changing  his  original  plan  of  ad-' 
ministration  in  order  to  adapt  it  to  the  unexpected 
exigencies  arising  out  of  human  sin. 

The  word  "  death  "  in  this  connection  is  used  in 
its  close  literal  sense  of  the  separation  of  soul  and 
body,  or  the  extinction  of  animal  life,  and  without 
any  reference  to  the  accidents  or  attendant  circum- 
stances of  death. 

The  fearfulness  of  death  ordinarily  arises  chiefly  ^ 
from  its  accidents,  rather  than  from  the  mere  act 
of  dying.  Prominent  among  these  accidents  is  sin, 
and  the  fear  of  the  consequences  of  sin.  Paul  rec- 
ognizes this  fact  when  he  says  (i  Cor.  xv.  56),  "The 
sting  of  death  is  sin  and  the  power  of  sin  is  the 
law."  This  text  teaches,  not  that  sin  is  causative 
of  death,  but  that  sin  gives  to  death  its  sting.  On 
the  contrary,  an  assurance  of  victory  over  sin  and 
the  grave  takes  away,  not  death  itself,  but  the  sting 
of  death. 


144  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

The  words  "resurrection  from  the  dead,"  or  from 
a  state  of  separation  of  soul  and  body,  is  used  in 
the  sense  of  the  investment  of  the  spirit,  separated 
from  the  body  of  flesh  and  blood,  with  a  spiritual 
body,  "a  building  from  God,  a  house  not  made  with 
hands  eternal  in  the  heavens"  (2  Cor.  v.  i),  "a 
body  fashioned  like  unto  Christ's  glorious  body" 
(Thes.  iii.  2). 

Resurrection  in  this  sense  is  essentially  different 
from  the  restoration  to  animal  life  of  Lazarus  and 
the  son  of  the  widow  of  Nain,  and  other  like  cases. 
In  such  cases  there  was  only  a  temporary  reunion 
of  the  spirit  and  the  animal  body.  But  in  the  res- 
urrection proper  the  spirit  is  invested  with  a  spirit- 
ual body,  which  is  immortal,  subject  to  no  process 
of  waste  or  decay,  and  has  consequently  no  need  of 
a  compensating  process  of  supply. 

The  spiritual  and  resurrection  bodies  of  the  re- 
deemed are  also  free  from  all  sensuous  appetites 
and  passions,  and  are  in  this  respect  like  unto  the 
angels  (Luke  xx.  34-38). 

It  is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  the  scriptures  never 
expressly  speak  of  the  resurrection  of  the  animal  or 
material  body  They,  on  the  contrary,  generally 
speak  of  "  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  "  and  "  from 
the  dead  "  and  of  the  dead  as  arising.  This  fact  is 
often  overlooked  in  considering  the  doctrine  of  the 
resurrection.  This  scripture  mode  of  presenting 
the  subject  of  the  resurrection  suggests  some  grave 
difficulties  concerning  the  mode  of  the  resurrection, 
or  as  to  what  it  really  is,  whether  it  is  the  reanima- 
tion,   or  revitalization  and  spiritualization  of  the 


Life  and  death.  145 

dead  or  devitalized  animal  body;  or  whether  it  is 
the  investiture  of  the  human  spirit  with  a  spiritual 
body  wholly  distinct  from  the  dead  body  and  inde- 
pendent of  it ;  or  whether  the  spiritual  resurrection 
body  is  a  divinely  appointed  product  of  the  immortal 
spirit  spontaneously  seeking  to  reinvest  itself  with 
an  environment  suited  to  its  changed  condition,  like 
the  life  principle  of  a  naked  grain  of  wheat  seeking 
to  envelop  itself  with  a  new  environment  or  body. 
The  first  of  these  views  seems — perhaps  only  seems 
— to  be  favored  by  the  resurrection  of  Christ;  the 
second  seems — perhaps  only  seems — to  be  favored  by 
the  few  first  verses  of  2  Cor.  v. ,  and  the  third  seems 
— perhaps  only  seems — to  be  proved  by  i  Cor.  xv. 
36-38.  But  it  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  discuss 
these  extremely  subtle  and  perplexing  questions  in 
this  connection. 

Our  inability  to  reach  satisfactory  conclusions  as 
to  the  manner  of  the  resurrection  is  not  even  pre- 
sumptive proof  against  the  fact  of  the  resurrection 
any  more  than  our  inability  to  understand  the  man- 
ner of  creation  is  presumptive  proof  against  the 
fact  of  creation. 

The  question  as  to  the  manner  of  the  resurrec- 
tion, however,  is  coming  into  more  prominence 
than  it  has  hitherto  been,  and  in  the  future  it 
may  be  expected  to  receive  more  attention  than  at 
present. 

Further,  it  is  coming  to  be  a  grave  question 
whether  the  immortality  of  the  soul  itself  does 
not  depend  upon  the  resurrection.  Some  of  our 
good  and  great  men  hold  that  the  soul's  life,  or  at 


146  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

least  its  activity,  depends  upon  its  vital  union  with 
the  body.  One  of  our  recent  and  most  popular 
commentaries  (James,  Fausett  and  Brown,  i  Cor. 
XV.  51-54)  says:  "  Nowhere  is  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  distinct  from  the  body  taught;  a  notion 
which  many  erroneously  have  derived  from  heathen 
philosophers.  Scripture  does  not  contemplate  the 
anomalous  state  brought  about  by  death  as  the  con- 
summation to  be  earnestly  looked  for  (2  Cor.  v.  4), 
but  the  resurrection,  54.  Then^  not  before.  Death 
has  yet  a  stingy  even  to  the  believers,  in  that  his 
body  is  to  be  under  its  power  till  the  resurrection. 
But  then  the  sting  and  power  of  death  shall  cease 
forever."  The  above  brief  quotations  involve  a 
bundle  of  incongruities  which  no  one  can  reconcile 
with  themselves  or  with  the  scripture.  But  all  these 
different  questions  aside,  the  question  naturally 
enough  arises,  whether  the  resurrection  is  not  an 
essential  part  of  God's  original  plan  concerning 
human  beings.  Many  texts  seem  by  necessary  im- 
plication to  authorize  an  affirmative  answer.  Note 
the  following: 

I.  I  Cor.  XV.  50:  "Flesh  and  blood  cannot  in- 
herit the  kingdom  of  God." 

By  the  kingdom  is  here  meant  not  the  kingdom 
of  grace,  but  the  ultimate  state  of  blessedness  and 
glory,  the  final  state  of  sainthood.  To  inherit  is  to 
receive  or  come  into  rightful  possession  and  enjoy- 
ment of  the  kingdom.  No  one  would  say  that  sin 
gave  to  Adam  his  flesh  and  blood.  All  would  admit 
that  he  was  as  truly  flesh  and  blood  before  he  sinned 
as  he  was  afterwards.     All  too  would  admit  that  he 


Life  and  death.  147 

was  created  to  inherit  this  kingdom  of  God.  The 
inference,  then,  seems  to  be  irresistible  that  God 
intended  from  the  beginning  that  his  physical  and 
animal  nature  should  undergo  just  such  a  change, 
as  to  his  body,  as  is  involved  in  the  resurrection,  a 
change  from  a  natural  to  a  spiritual  body.  This 
change  from  the  natural  to  the  spiritual  body  is  ex- 
actly what  the  resurrection  is  intended  to  accom- 
plish and  what  it  did  actually  accomplish  in  the 
person  of  Christ,  who  is  the  first  fruits,  the  first  vis- 
ible fruits  of  it. 

2.  I  Cor.  XV.  50:  "  Neither  doth  corruption  in- 
herit incorruption  iaphtharsiafi).^^ 

Corruption  and  incorruption  are  abstract  terms 
equivalent  to  the  concrete  form.  IVJiat  is  in  itself 
corrupt  does  not  ittherit  or  attain  to  what  is  incor- 
rupt. The  text  means,  neither  does  the  mortal  in- 
herit immortality  {aphtharsian)^  for  what  is  physi- 
cally corrupt  is  necessarily  mortal,  and  what  is  in- 
corruptible is  of  course  immortal.  Aphtharsian  (in- 
corruption) is  so  translated  in  Rom.  ii.  7  and  2 
Tim.  i.  10.  Now  there  was  never  a  day  in  Adam's 
history,  either  before  or  after  his  dejection,  when 
his  body  was  not  undergoing  change  and  this 
change  is  itself  the  product  and  proof  of  a  corrupt- 
ible and  perishing  body.  Now  as  corruption  can- 
not inherit  incorruption  or  the  mortal  produce  the 
immortal,  we  seem  to  be  shut  up  to  the  necessity 
of  believing  that  God  from  the  beginning  purposed 
to  invest  the  human  spirit  with  an  incorruptible 
or  spiritual  body,  freed  from  its  sensuous  nature, 
such  as  is  assured  to  it  in  the  resurrection. 


148  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

3.  I  Cor.  XV.  13  :  "  But  if  there  be  no  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead,  then  is  Christ  not  risen." 

These  words  are  used  by  Paul  as  an  argument 
against  some  parties  who,  it  seems,  admitted  the 
resurrection  of  Christ,  but  denied  the  general  res- 
urrection, Paul's  argument  against  this  position 
is  that  if  there  is  no  general  resurrection  then  Christ 
himself  hath  not  been  raised  ;  or  that  Christ's  res- 
urrection presupposes  a  general  resurrection;  that 
if  there  is  no  such  resurrection  then  Christ  himself 
has  not  been  raised,  just  as  the  fact  that  one  man 
dies  presupposes  that  all  other  men  are  mortal,  or 
must  die,  all  having  the  same  essential  characteris- 
tics. Most  commentators  exactly  reverse  Paul's 
argument,  and  assert  a  causative  relation  between 
the  resurrection  of  Christ  and  that  of  other  men, 
or  that  the  resurrection  of  Christ  is  causative  of 
the  general  resurrection,  or  that  the  general 
resurrection  is  conditioned  upon  Christ's  resurrec- 
tion. But  Paul,  on  the  contrary,  conditions  Christ's 
resurrection  on  the  fact  of  a  general  resurrection  as 
a  part  of  God's  plan  or  purpose.  This  is  evident 
from  his  language  literally  or  naturally  construed. 
"For  if  there  be  no  resurrection  of  the  dead,  then 
is  Christ  not  risen."  Here  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  is  conditioned  upon  the  general  resurrection 
as  a  fact  in  God's  plan,  just  as  the  death  of  one  man 
is  conditioned  upon  the  fact  that  in  God's  purpose 
all  are  destined  to  die,  and  as  the  death  of  one  is 
the  conclusive  proof  that  all  must  die,  so  the  res- 
urrection of  one  (Christ)  is  proof  that  all  shall 
rise.     This  is  exactly  Paul's  argument  against  those 


LIFE  AND  DEATH.  149 

that  admitted  Christ's  resurrection  but  denied  a 
general  resurrection. 

So  much  importance  did  the  Apostle  attach  to 
this  argument  that  he  repeats  it  in  v.  16.  "  For  if 
the  dead  rise  not  then  is  not  Christ  raised."  Paul's 
argument  makes  Christ's  resurrection  a  single  in- 
stance, an  exemplification  and  proof  of  a  universal 
law  of  humanity  which  has  its  origin  in  the  pur- 
pose of  God.  It  is  in  no  proper  sense  the  cause  of 
the  general  resurrection,  but  is  strictly  an  exempli- 
fication and  proof  of  a  universal  resurrection  of  the 
dead.  That  the  resurrection  of  Christ  is  not  causa- 
tive of  the  general  resurrection  but  a  proof  of  it  is 
put  beyond  all  reasonable  doubt  by  v.  20.  "But 
now  is  Christ  risen  from  the  dead  and  become  the 
first  fruits  of  them  that  slept.' '  The  reference  man- 
ifestly is  to  the  earliest  or  first  fruits  of  the  harvest. 
The  first  fruit  is  the  pledge,  a  sort  of  'assurance  of 
subsequent  fruit.  Now  it  is  a  self-evident  truth  that 
the  first  fruits  of  a  harvest  do  not  produce  them- 
selves ;  nor  do  they  produce  or  cause  or  necessitate 
the  harvest.  They  only  give  proof  or  assurance 
of  a  harvest.  In  like  manner  the  resurrection  of 
Christ,  as  the  first  fruits  of  them  that  sleep,  does 
not  cause  or  produce  or  condition  or  make  necessa- 
ry the  general  resurrection  of  the  dead.  It,  on  the 
contrary,  gives  proof  of  such  a  resurrection. 

The  existence  of  a  fact  and  the  revelation  of  a 
fact  are  different  things.  So  the  cause  of  an 
event  and  the  proof  of  an  event  are  different  things, 
and  must  be  distinguished,  otherwise  we  shall 
be   involved   in   inextricable   confusion.      Making 


I50  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

these  pertinent  distinctions  we  can,  I  think, 
pretty  accurately  apprehend  the  true  relation 
of  Christ's  resurrection  to  the  general  resurrec- 
tion, which  may  be  fairly  stated  thus:  Christ's 
resurrection  did  not  cause  or  originate  the  existence 
of  the  resurrection  as  a  factor  of  God's  administra- 
tion concerning  human  destiny  but  revealed  or 
made  known  to  us  its  existence  as  an  essential  fac- 
tor in  God's  plan  or  administration.  Again,  Christ's 
resurrection  is  not  the  source  or  ground  of  the  gen- 
eral resurrection  but  the  proof  and  exemplification 
of  it.  Again,  Christ's  resurrection  is  neither  the 
cause  nor  the  condition  of  the  general  resurrection, 
but  the  proof  of  it.  If  this  is  a  correct  statement 
then  it  is  clear  enough  that  Christ's  resurrection 
and  the  general  resurrection  are  not  related  as  cause 
and  effect,  nor  as  condition  and  consequent,  as  is 
often  asserted,  but  as  co-ordinate  and  nondependent 
events,  both  having  their  cause  in  the  divine  pur- 
pose or  will,  and  that  purpose,  I  think,  was  not  an 
afterthought  of  God  suggested  by  the  sin  of  the 
first  man,  but  God's  original  purpose  coincident 
with  his  purpose  to  create  man  a  rational  animal. 
Death  and  the  resurrection,  I  take  it,  are  the  divine- 
ly-appointed means  through  which  God  from  the 
beginning  purposed  to  exalt  man  to  the  highest 
heaven  ;  hence  neither  death  nor  the  resurrection 
from  the  dead  is  conditioned  upon  the  sin  of  the 
first  man. 

One  of  the  most  plausible  arguments  in  support 
of  the  doctrine  that  physical  death  is  the  result  of 
sin  is  founded  on  the  assumption  ;  that  the  resur- 


LIFE  AND  DEATH.  151 

rection  is  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  designed  to  set 
aside  the  efifects  of  sin  in  relation  to  our  physical 
nature.  The  argument  assumes  that  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ  is  causative  of  the  general  resurrec- 
tion, which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  incapable  of  proof. 
We  know  with  the  utmost  certainty  that  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Christ  do  not  set  aside  spiritual 
death,  nor  do  they  set  aside  physical  death  even  of 
believers.  It  is  true  that  the  mission  of  Christ  was 
to  abolish  death,  both  spiritual  and  temporal  (Heb. 
ii.  14),  but  these  things  are  accomplished  not  by 
his  death  or  resurrection  or  both,  but  by  his 
own  life-giving  power.  He  himself  is  the  res- 
urrection and  the  life.  He  abolishes  spiritual  death 
by  the  impartation  of  his  own  spiritual  life,  and 
temporal  death  by  giving  to  the  dead  a  body  like 
unto  his  own  glorious  body.  Christ's  earthly  min- 
istry— his  miracles,  teachings,  death,  and  resurrec- 
tion— did  not  originate  life  and  immortality,  but 
brought  them  to  light — revealed  them  to  the  world 
in  a  manner  more  striking  and  satisfactory  than 
could  have  been  done  by  any  other  method. 

The  resurrection  does  much  more  than  restore 
life  to  the  body  or  compensate  for  the  loss  of  ani- 
mal life.  It  gives  a  spiritual  instead  of  a  physical, 
an  incorruptible  instead  of  a  corruptible,  an  immor- 
tal instead  of  a  mortal  body,  a  body  like  unto 
Christ's  glorious  body,  free  from  all  sensuous  appe- 
tites and  passions,  incapable  of  all  sensuous  pains 
and  pleasures,  making  them  in  all  these  respects 
equal  unto  the  angels.  It  is  not  the  whole  truth, 
not  scarcely  any  part  of  the  truth,  to  say  that  re- 


V' 


152  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

generation  puts  the  human  soul  back  into  the  state 
in  which  Adam  was  created.  It  does  far  more  than 
this  as  will  be  elsewhere  seen.  So  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  does  far  more  than  restore  the  dead  body  or 
furnish  an  equivalent  substitute  for  it.  The  body  of 
Adam  was  subject  to  death,  did  actually  die.  But 
the  resurrection  body,  Christ  himself  tells  us,  can  die 
no  more.  "  Neither  can  they  die  any  more  for  they 
are  equal  unto  the  angels;  and  are  the  children  of 
God  being  children  of  the  resurrection."  (Lu.  xx. 
36.)  The  fact  that  Adam's  body  was  created  capa- 
ble of  death  shows  irrefutably  that  it  was  not  im- 
mortal, and  that  God  from  the  beginning  intended 
it  to  be  superceded  by  a  spiritual  body,  making  it 
equal  to  the  angels  in  this  respect  and  liable  to  die 
no  more.  Such  a  change  is  just  what  the  resur- 
rection is  intended  to  secure. 

In  the  light  of  Bible  facts  it  appears  to  me  incon- 
testably  true  that  both  physical  death  and  the  res- 
urrection are  intended  in  God's  original  plan  or 
purpose  concerning  the  ultimate  destiny  of  human- 
ity. If  this  is  not  true,  then  God,  it  seems,  was 
somehow  thwarted  in  his  purpose  and  reduced  to 
the  necessity  of  changing  his  original  plans  for  ac- 
complishing his  purpose  in  regard  to  human  im- 
mortality. But  this  view  attributes  imperfection 
to  God,  finitizes  his  wisdom  or  power  or  both  and 
must  therefore  be  rejected.  If  these  statements  are 
grounded  in  facts — if  both  death  and  resurrection 
of  the  deaj^e  integral  parts  of  God's  purpose  or 
plan  concerning  humanity — then  it  is  sun-clear 
that  men  did  not  become  mortal  by  Adam's  sin  or 


Life  and  death.  155 

any  other  sin.     Nor  did  sin  originate  the  necessity 
of  the  resurrection. 

Suppose  the  scriptures  were  dumb  as  to  the 
source  of  physical  death,  then  we  could  know  noth- 
ing of  its  source  except  what  we  could  gather 
from  such  sciences  as  biology,  physiology,  anat- 
omy and  geology.  These  sciences  are  founded  upon 
established  facts  learned  by  observation  and  the 
necessary  implications  of  these  facts.  Would  the 
facts  upon  which  these  sciences  rest  ever  even  sug- 
gest that  the  human  body  was  created  immortal 
and  became  mortal  by  a  sinful  act  or  any  other  act 
possible  to  man  ?  Certainly  not.  On  the  contrary, 
they  are  utterly  irreconcilable  with  such  a  suppo- 
sition and  imperatively  require  us  to  believe  that, 
as  to  his  animal  nature,  man  is  as  truly  subject  to 
death  as  the  horse  or  any  other  animal.  Nor  is  it 
necessary  that  we  shall  be  adepts  in  these  sciences 
in  order  to  be  able  to  see  that  men  as  really  die 
from  a  necessity  as  do  all  other  animals.  The  man 
of  ordinary  reasoning  powers,  however  ignorant  of 
technical  science  he  may  be,  if  he  permit  himself  to 
reason  upon  the  subject  at  all,  cannot  fail  to  see  the 
unreasonableness  of  attributing  the  death  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  to  a  necessity  of  nature  and  the 
death  of  men  to  the  accident  of  sin. 


CHAPTER  X. 

NECESSITATED  VIRTUE;   OR,  HOLINESS  AND  PROBA- 
TION. 

LET  it  be  assumed  that  necessitated  virtue  or  hol- 
'  iness,  or  necessitated  vice  or  unholiness  are 
impossible  things,  because  virtue  and  vice  are 
predicable  only  of  free  or  unnecessitated  acts. 
Judicial  holiness  as  it  is  sometimes  called  is 
predicable  of  anything  that  is  consecrated  to  God. 
Hence  this  kind  of  holiness  is  in  the  Bible  often 
predicated  of  things  rational  and  irrational,  ani- 
mate and  inanimate. 

But  even  this  kind  of  holiness  is  never  a  concre- 
ation,  but  is  produced  only  by  a  consecration  to 
sacred  uses.  Holiness,  in  the  sense  of  innocence 
or  uprightness,  is  a  possible  concreation.  Indeed, 
we  cannot  conceive  it  possible  for  a  newly  created 
mind,  as  Adam's  was,  to  be  created  in  any  other 
state  than  that  of  uprightness  or  innocence;  for  it 
is  self-evident  that  such  a  mind  could  have  no 
more  to  do  in  determining  its  own  mortal  qualities 
than  in  determining  its  own  being  or  any  of  its 
physical  senses  or  functions. 

Anything  imparted  to  it  in  its  creation  would  be 
either  its  felicity  or  calamity,  and  not  its  virtue  or 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  155 

vice,  and  would,  of  course,  be  neither  rewardable 
nor  punishable. 

It  has  been  the  calamity  of  a  large  part  of  the 
theological  world,  from  Augustine  to  this  day,  to 
mistake  this  concreated  innocence  for  true  holiness 
or  such  holiness  as  meets  the  requirements  of  the 
divine  law  and  gives  fitness  for  eternal  life;  or  such 
holiness  as  is  the  sequence  of  loving  God  with  all  the 
heart.  The  orthodox  confessions  generally  say  that 
God  imbued  man  with  righteousness  and  true  holi- 
ness, and  the  proof  text  chiefly  relied  upon  in  sup- 
port of  this  idea  is  Gen.  i.  26,  "And  God  said,  Let 
us  make  man  in  our  image,  after  our  likeness." 
The  proposed  proof  seems  wholly  irrelevant. 

The  image  and  likeness  of  God  as  here  used, 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  can  include  only  the 
psychological  likeness  of  the  Creator,  and  conse- 
quently the  possibility  of  positive  or  true  holiness, 
and  not  true  holiness  itself.  Intelligence,  sensi- 
bility and  will,  or  freedom,  furnish  the  basis  and  the 
only  possible  basis  of  a  moral  character.  Without 
these  prerequisites,  it  is  inconceivable  how  the 
Deity  himself  or  any  of  his  creatures  could  possess 
any  moral  attributes,  or  any  moral  character.  On 
the  contrary,  the  combination  of  these  qualities  in 
any  one  creature  constitutes  that  creature  a  moral 
agent,  and  as  such  capable  of  moral  action.  Both 
righteousness  and  holiness  presuppose  a  law  or 
standard  of  righteousness  or  holiness.  But  moral 
rightness  or  holiness  consists  in  right  or  obedient 
action  from  the  right  motive.  The  correctness  of 
this  proposition,   I  suppose,   will  not   be  denied. 


156  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

But  as  it  is  plainly  impossible  for  the  mind  to  act 
before  it  is  created,  and  as  holiness  consists  in  right 
action  from  right  motives,  it  naturally  follows  that 
a  concreated  holiness  is  an  impossible  thing.  No 
fair  exegesis  of  Gen.  i.  26,  or  any  other  text  of  the 
Bible,  requires  us  to  believe  that  righteousness  and 
true  holiness  are  intended  to  be  taught  in  it,  and 
the  facts  in  the  case  prove  that  they  are  not  in- 
tended. If  it  should  be  said  that  though  Adam 
was  of  course  created  before  he  acted,  yet  he  was^ 
in  his  creation,  endued  with  righteousness  and  true 
holiness,  and  out  of  the  holy  affections  must  spring 
only  holy  or  right  motives,  which  would  determine 
his  will  to  right  action,  and  therefore  he  was  truly 
endued  with  true  holiness.  It  is  sujEcient  to  re- 
mark that  if  the  philosophy  that  puts  the  will 
under  the  causative  dominion  of  the  motive,  and 
the  motive  under  the  control  of  the  moral  feelings, 
be  true,  then  one  of  two  facts  logically  follows : 

1.  God  is  the  author  of  sin,  or  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  sin  in  the  universe.  The  advocates  of 
this  philosophy  are  at  liberty  to  accept  whichever 
horn  of  the  dilemma  they  may  prefer. 

2.  The  idea  of  a  probation  is  inconsistent  with 
the  assumption  of  a  concreated  holiness.  If  man 
was  created  with  true  holiness,  why  put  him  on 
probation  at  all  ?  If  possessed  of  true  holiness, 
could  the  Creator  require  anything  more  than  true 
holiness?  Could  the  law  require  more  than  this, 
or  could  his  own  obedience  make  what  was  true 
any  truer?  Could  human  acts  better  or  in  any  way 
improve  the  handiwork  of  God?     Why  then  was 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  157 

the  first  man  put  on  probation?  If  it  should 
be  said  he  was  put  on  probation  in  order  to  be 
confirmed  in  holiness,  it  is  pertinent  to  reply 
that  according  to  the  theory  his  own  obedience  had 
no  power  or  tendency  to  confirm  his  holiness  ;  on 
the  contrary,  his  confirmation,  if  it  had  transpired 
at  all,  would  have  been  by  a  sovereign  judicial  act 
of  his  creator.  That  is,  his  own  acts  of  obedience 
could  not  confirm  him,  but  his  confirmation  must 
be  by  a  judicial  act  of  his  creator.  And  if  his  con- 
firmation must  be  by  a  sovereign  judicial  act,  why 
was  he  not  then  judicially  confirmed  at  once  and 
without  probation  ? 

If  he  was  created  in  righteousness  and  true  holi- 
ness, and  none  but  God  could  confirm  him  in  holi- 
ness, why  was  not  his  creation  and  confirmation  in 
holiness  immediate,  or  from  the  beginning? 

According  to  the  theory  this  was  altogether  pos- 
sible and  would  have  been  almost  infinitely  benefi- 
cent, because  it  would  have  excluded  forever  the 
possibility  of  sin  and  all  its  resultant  evils  from  our 
world,  and  would  have  superceded  the  necessity  of 
the  whole  scheme  of  redemption  through  the  suf- 
fering and  death  of  Jesus  Christ. 

On  this  assumption  of  a  concreated  holiness  and 
judicial  confirmation,  embracing  the  first  man  and 
all  his  posterity,  a  probation  seems  to  be,  not  only 
unnecessary,  but  well-nigh  the  worst  method  pos- 
sible for  the  human  race.  It  also  bears  hard  on  the 
divine  administration  as  may  be  shown  elsewhere. 

3.  The  hypothesis  of  a  necessitated  holiness  is 
contradictory   of  the  fundamental  principles  of  a 


158  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

moral  government,  and  is  therefore  an  absurdity. 
A  physical  and  moral  government  are  radically  dif- 
ferent in  t\yo  respects.  They  differ  in  their  sub- 
jects, and  then  in  their  modes  of  government  and 
administration. 

The  physical  world,  consisting  only  of  inert  mat- 
ter, is  under  the  irresistible  control  of  physical 
causation — relentless  necessity  reigns  over  all.  The 
moral  world,  comprising  all  rational  and  accounta- 
ble creatures,  is  not  governed  by  laws  of  physical 
causation,  or  by  necessity  of  any  kind,  but  by  moral 
power,  sometimes  properly  called  moral  suasion. 
That  is,  by  the  power  of  truth,  by  appeals  addressed 
to  the  intelligence,  in  the  interest  of  the  right  and 
good.  Matter  and  mind  are  fundamentally  diflfer- 
ent  in  essence  and  characteristics  and  equally 
dijfferent  in  the  mode  of  government  to  which  the 
creator  has  subjected  them.  It  is  just  as  possible 
to  govern  the  physical  world  by  moral  suasion  as 
it  is  to  govern  the  moral  world  by  physical  force, 
or  by  necessity  of  any  sort.  It  is  accordingly  as 
possible  to  cause  a  mountain  to  move  by  moral 
suasion  as  to  cause  a  mind  to  put  forth  a  morally  re- 
sponsible act  or  a  holy  or  a  sinful  act  by  physical  or 
necessitating  force.  Of  course  it  is  possible  for 
Omnipotence  to  act  upon  the  mind  so  as  to  necessi- 
tate any  act  or  course  of  action  he  may  choose. 

The  necessitating  power  may  be  in  accord  with 
the  inclinations  of  the  mind  or  contrary  to  them, 
it  matters  not  which.  But  if  the  mind  acts  under 
necessity  then  the  act,  so  far  as  the  mind  is  con- 
cerned, has  no  moral  character,  is  neither  right  nor 


Necessitated  virtue.  159 

wrong,  because  the  mind  is  not  the  agent  or  actor, 
but  merely  the  instrument,  God,  or  the  necessitat- 
ing power,  is  the  author.  That  necessitated  acts 
are  grounds  of  moral  accountabilit}'  is  one  of  the 
vagaries  of  one  of  the  schools  of  philosophy.  All 
men,  even  the  advocates  of  moral  necessity,  practi- 
cally acknowledge  that  freedom  is  necessary  to  ac- 
countability. No  one  would  think  of  punishing 
an  agent  for  an  act  known  to  be  necessitated.  The 
Bible  recognizes  this  principle  from  beginning  to 
end.  Holy  men  of  God,  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost, 
wrote  the  sacred  scriptures.  These  men  were  only 
the  organs  of  revelation.  The  Holy  Ghost — God — 
is  the  author.  If  what  they  thus  wrote  is  true,  it  is 
not  their  merit;  if  false,  it  is  not  their  vice.  As  to 
the  truthfulness  or  untruthfulness  of  their  writings, 
they  are  in  no  sense  responsible.  Why  ?  Because 
they  spake  and  wrote  from  necessity. 

Just  so  far  as  they  could  have  had  any  voluntary 
control  over  the  matter  the  work  would  have  been 
human,  not  divine.  It  is  also  equally  possible  for 
God  to  make  the  minds  of  bad  men  the  instruments 
of  his  will.  So  he  used  Balaam,  necessitating  him 
to  bless  Israel  when  he  wished  to  curse  him.  So  he 
compelled  Saul  and  his  soldier  and  Caiphas  to 
prophecy,  and  so  he  caused  Balaam's  ass  to  rebuke 
his  master.  In  all  these  cases  the  right  thing  was 
done,  but  doing  the  right  thing  was  nothing  to  the 
credit  of  Balaam  or  Saul  or  Caiphas.  Why  ?  Be- 
cause their  acts  were  divinely  necessitated.  God 
was  the  author,  and  they  the  passive  instruments. 

Another  class  of  facts  illustrates  the  same  princi- 


i6o  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

pie  in  relation  to  wrong  (wicked)  acts.     Pharaoh 
ordered  the  slaughter  of  the  male  children  of  the 
Hebrews.      Herod    the   Great,    ordered   the   male 
children  of  Bethlehem  under  two  years  old  to  be 
put  to  death.     Herod  Antipas   ordered  John   the 
Baptist  to  be  beheaded.     Neither  of  these  tyrants 
laid  violent  hands  upon  any  of  these  innocent  par- 
ties.    They  are,  however,  adjudged  guilty  both  by 
the  laws  of  God  and  man,  because  they  were  the  real 
authors  of  the  bloody  deeds;  while  the  executioners 
are  adjudged  innocent,  because   they   acted  under 
necessity,  not  truly  under  such  necessity  as  God 
or  nature  imposes  on  man,  still,  under  a  necessity 
sufficiently  imperative  to  excuse  them  from  the  au- 
thorship of  the  crimes.  Pharaoh  and  the  Herods  were 
responsible  and  guilty  because  they  acted  freely  or 
without  necessity.  Their  servants  who  did  the  blood- 
spilling  were  innocent,  because  they  acted  under 
necessity.     No  principle  in  ethics  is  better  under- 
stood or  more  generally  acted  upon  than  this,  that 
freedom  from  necessity  is  absolutely  required  to  a 
virtuous  or  vicious  action,  to  holiness  or  unholi- 
ness;  on  the  contrary  necessity  exempts  from  all 
criminality,  whatsoever  may  be  the  enormity  of  the 
deed.     But  as  created  holiness  or  virtue  is  a  neces- 
sitated holiness,  it  is  therefore  incompatible  with 
the  fundamental  principles  of  a  moral  government. 
4.  This  will  further  appear  from  the  fact  that  a 
necessitated  holiness  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
Any  proposition  involving  such  a  combination  of 
terms  is  self-destructive. 

As  we  have  just  seen,  moral  qualities  are  predi- 


Necessitated  Virtue.  i6r 

cable  of  free  acts  only,  but  holiness,  virtue,  etc., 
are  moral  acts,  and  are  therefore  impossible  as  qual- 
ities in  necessitated  acts  or  states.  We  would  as 
well  talk  of  pleasant  harm  or  vicious  virtue  and  un- 
righteous holiness.  The  ideas  symbolized  are  mu- 
tually repugnant  and  self-destructive.  I  will  close 
this  paragraph  with  a  question  from  the  late  Albert 
Taylor  Bledsoe,  who  was  one  of  the  most  acute 
thinkers  America  has  ever  produced.  In  his  theo- 
dicy, p.  193,  he  says:  "As  contradictions  are  im- 
possible in  themselves,  so  to  say  that  God  could 
perform  them  would  not  be  to  magnify  his  power, 
but  to  expose  our  own  absurdity.  When  we  affirm 
that  Omnipotence  cannot  cause  a  thing  to  be  and 
not  to  be  at  the  same  time,  or  cannot  make  two 
and  two  equal  to  five,  we  do  not  set  limits  to  it,  we 
simply  declare  that  such  things  are  not  the  objects 
of  power.  A  circle  cannot  be  made  to  possess  the 
qualities  of  a  square,  nor  a  square  the  qualities  of  a 
circle.  Infinite  power  cannot  confer  the  properties 
of  one  of  these  figures  upon  the  other,  not  because 
it  is  less  than  infinite  power,  but  because  it  is  not 
within  the  nature  or  province,  or  dominion  of  power, 
to  perform  such  things,  to  embody  such  inherent 
and  immutable  absurdities  in  an  actual  existence.  .  . 
If  God  should  cause  virtue  to  exist  in  the  breast  of 
a  moral  agent  he  would  work  a  contradiction.  In 
other  words,  the  production  of  virtue  by  any  ex- 
traneous agency  is  one  of  those  impossible  conceits, 
one  of  those  inherent  absurdities,  which  lie  quite 
beyond  the  sphere  of  light  in  which  the  divine 
Omnipotence  moves,  and  has  no  existence  except 


1 62  •   ANTHROPOLOGY. 

in  the  outer  darkness  of  a  lawless  imagination,  or 
in  the  dim  regions  of  error,  in  which  the  true 
nature  of  moral  goodness  has  never  been  seen." 

Finally,  if  a  necessitated  virtue  is  in  the  nature 
of  things  possible,  or  if  virtue  is  properly  a  product 
of  divine  Omnipotence,  as  is  the  creation  of  the 
earth  or  sun  or  the  human  body  or  the  human 
mind,  then  we  should  expect  God,  whose  essence  is 
love,  to  exclude  sin  forever  from  his  dominion  as 
the  abominable  thing  that  he  hates,  and  to  fill  all 
departments  of  his  intelligent  creation  with  virtue 
and  highest  happiness. 

Let  it  be  assumed  that  in  all  newly  created  minds, 
as  was  Adam's  and  the  angels',  the  possibility  of 
virtue  is  of  necessity  the  possibility  of  vice,  or  that 
the  rudiments  or  potentialities  of  moral  character 
in  such  minds  may,  by  voluntary  action,  be  devel- 
oped into  either  a  virtuous  or  vicious  character, 
and  that  a  moral  government  is,  from  its  inherent 
nature,  liable  to  moral  evil.  Virtue  and  vice,  holi- 
ness and  unholiness,  are  the  alternative  possibilities 
of  such  a  mind.  Virtue  and  vice  are  predicable 
only  of  creatures  possessed  of  intelligence,  sensi- 
bility, and  freedom.  Without  intelligence  there 
could  be  no  apprehension  of  moral  distinctions,  no 
knowledge  of  right  and  wrong.  Without  knowl- 
edge or  thought  there  could  be  no  sensibility,  be- 
cause sensibility  is  always  conditioned  upon  percep- 
tion. But  without  sensibility  there  could  be  no 
motive  to  action,  because  action  is  always  condi- 
tioned upon  motive.  Hence  without  intelligence 
there  could  be  no  motive,  no  volition,  no  virtue,  no 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  163 

vice,  no  moral  character,  good  or  bad.  But  we 
cannot  predicate  either  virtue  or  vice  of  mere  intel- 
ligence. Our  knowledge  may  be  valuable  or  worth- 
less, but  we  cannot  say  it  is  either  virtuous  or 
vicious,  holy  or  unholy.  The  intelligence  is  purely 
passive.  It  simply  receives  what  the  senses  and 
rational  intuitions  pour  into  it.  What  it  thus  re- 
ceives is  neither  its  merit  or  demerit,  neither  its 
virtue  nor  vice.  We  must  not  forget  to  discrimi- 
nate between  the  intelligence  and  the  mind  or 
man.  The  man  may  be  responsible  both  for  the 
measure  and  quality  of  his  knowledge. 

But  this  is  only  because  it  is  the  proper  function 
of  the  will  to  direct  the  attention  of  the  perceptive 
faculties,  so  as  to  enlarge  the  area  of  knowledge^ 
and  so  as  to  determine  the  character  of  the  knowl- 
edge thus  acquired.  Of  this  act  of  attention  or  of 
the  will,  moral  qualities  may  be  predicated,  as  right 
or  wrong,  but  of  the  knowledge  itself  we  cannot 
predicate  moral  quality,  though  it  may  be  profitable 
or  unprofitable.  To  do  so  is  to  confound  an  act  and 
its  consequences.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the 
sensibility.  It,  too,  is  passive.  It  does  not  origin- 
ate action,  but  passively  receives  impressions  made 
upon  it  through  the  intelligence.  Whatever  in- 
fluence the  feelings  exert  upon  the  will  is  only  a 
transmitted  influence  that  originated  outside  of  the 
sensibilities  themselves.  The  sensibilities,  like  the 
intelligence,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  voluntary  power,  are  in  themselves  neither 
virtuous  nor  vicious.  Every  thought  produces  a 
corresponding  emotion  or  moves  the  sensibilities. 


1 64  ANTHROPOLOGY 

But  our  thoughts  are  involuntary,  and  the  corre- 
sponding emotions  are  equally  so.  Here,  again,  we 
must  discriminate  between  the  abstract  feelings  and 
the  will,  which  is  capable  of  exerting  an  influence 
over  them  as  it  does  over  the  intelligence  in  deter- 
mining their  measure  and  quality.  We  cannot, 
therefore,  predicate  virtuousness  or  viciousness  of 
sensibilities  or  feelings  only  so  far  as  they  are  vol- 
untary, or  rather,  the  virtue  or  the  vice  connected 
with  the  voluntary  feelings  lies  in  the  will  and  not 
in  the  sensibility  itself.  Quite  otherwise  is  it  in  re- 
gard to  the  will.  Its  action  is  conditioned  upon 
motive,  but  it  does  not,  like  the  intelligence  and 
sensibility,  act  only  as  acted  upon,  but  originates 
actions.  The  occasion  of  its  activity  is  furnished 
through  the  intelligence  and  sensibility,  but  as  we 
have  seen,  the  will  is  capable  of  reaction  upon  these 
faculties  of  the  mind  and  cannot  therefore  be  under 
their  dominion,  and  is  not  by  them  or  any  other 
means  put  under  the  laws  of  causation.  Its  acts  are 
not  caused  but  are  themselves  self-originated  and 
causative.  The  human  mind  is  in  regard  to  its  own 
acts,  like  the  Divine  mind,  free. 

If  the  acts  of  the  Divine  mind  are  under  the  laws 
of  causation,  or  are  in  any  way  necessitated  by  a 
force  within  or  without,  then  God  is  not  God,  but 
only  a  link  in  the  chain  of  causation.  If  the  Divine 
mind  acts  necessarily  then,  of  course,  the  universe 
is  a  thing  of  necessity  and  nothing  could  be  differ- 
ent from  what  it  is  and  all  moral  distinctions  are 
myths.  If  the  Divine  mind  acts  freely  and  not  from 
necessity  then  it  was  possible  for  the  universe  not 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  165 

to  be ;  but  as  it  does  exist  it  must  be  a  thing  of 
choice,  and  a  moral  world  is  a  possible  thing.  If 
the  human  mind  was  created  in  the  image  of  the 
divine  Mind,  as  we  are  told  it  was,  then  it  is  cer- 
tain it  is  free  in  its  limited  sphere,  in  exactly  the 
same  sense  in  which  the  Divine  mind  is  free  ;  for 
if  this  is  not  true  then  the  human  mind  is  wanting 
in  the  most  essential  feature  of  the  Divine  image, 
to-wit,  true  freedom  or  the  power  to  originate  ac- 
tion. We  have  previously  seen  that  a  concreated 
holiness  or  a  necessitated  holiness  is  an  impossible 
thing,  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The  same  is  true 
of  sin  or  vice  in  any  of  its  possible  forms.  But  if 
a  concreated  holiness  is  an  impossible  thing  because 
it  would  be  antecedent  to  all  voluntary  action,  and 
if  a  necessitated  holiness  is  also  impossible  because 
it  would  destroy  the  most  vital  characteristics  of  a 
moral  agent,  then  it  necessarily  follows  that  if  crea- 
ture holiness  exists  at  all,  it  must  be  the  product  of 
the  creature  will.  Holiness  or  virtue  is  predicable 
both  of  the  act  and  the  actor,  but  not  in  the  same 
sense.  A  holy  act  consists  in  doing  or  purposing 
to  do  the  right  thing  from  the  right  motive.  This 
is  the  highest  possible  form  of  holiness  or  virtue. 
But  every  moral  act,  whether  virtuous  or  vicious, 
exerts  a  reflex  influence  upon  the  agent  and  in  this 
way,  by  an  unbroken  series,  virtuous  acts  and  habits 
are  formed,  and  iinder  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
habit  the  agent  becomes  less  and  still  less  liable  to 
vice  or  sin  until  the  habit  of  virtue,  growing  stronger 
as  time  rolls  on,  and  temptation  after  temptation  is 
resisted,  is  confirmed,  that  is,  becomes  so  strong  that 


1 66  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

no  adverse  influence  to  which  the  moral  creature  is 
subject  can  break  it.  In  this  way  I  suppose  the 
holy  angels  were  confirmed  in  holiness  and  rendered 
indefectible.  In  this  way  I  suppose  Adam'  would 
have  developed  his  native  innocence  into  positive 
virtue  and  would  have  been  confirmed  in  holiness 
had  he  chosen  the  right  instead  of  the  wrong. 

If  this  does  not  give  substantially  the  genesis, 
the  true  and  only  possible  genesis,  of  creature  vir- 
tue and  creature  vice,  then  it  must  be  confessed  I 
have  studied  the  Bible  and  the  philosophy  of  human 
character  to  little  purpose.  lyCt  it  be  distinctly 
borne  in  mind  that  the  process  or  genesis  commences 
not  with  the  intelligence  nor  with  the  sensibility, 
though  they  are  both  necessary  to  volition,  but  with 
the  will.  How  many  right  acts  of  the  will  it  would 
require  to  form  an  invincible  habit  of  obedience  in 
a  newly  created  mind,  free  from  all  bias  to  wrong,  I 
have  no  means  of  knowing.  Obedience  on  the  part 
of  such  a  mind  I  suppose  would  be  rendered  with 
the  greatest  ease  so  long  as  it  might  not  be  assailed 
by  strong  temptation.  In  the  absence  of  tempta- 
tion I  suppose  defection  would  be  highly  improba- 
ble if  not  impossible.  But  the  exclusion  of  such  a 
mind  from  temptation  would  be  as  inconceivable 
and  absurd  as  a  concreated  or  necessitated  holiness, 
for  if  there  were  no  evil  spirits  to  suggest  the  temp- 
tation, as  was  the  case  with  Eve  in  Eden,  and  with 
Christ  in  the  wilderness,  yet  the  activities  of  the 
mind  itself  would  be  altogether  sufficient  to  furnish 
the  temptation.  Nor  would  it  be  possible  for  the 
creator  to  deprive  the  mind  of  becoming  its  own 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  '       167 

tempter  without  depriving  it  of  the  attributes  of  a 
moral  agent.  Heuce  we  have  no  account  of  any 
orders  of  intelligent  creatures  that  have  not  been 
subject  to  temptation.  Satan,  or  the  first  fallen 
angel,  was  self-tempted  because  there  were  no  evil 
spirits  to  tempt  him,  and  we  are  authorized  from 
this  fact  to  believe  that  any  newly  created  intelli- 
gence has  innate  power  of  creating  sin  without  any 
external  seductive  agency.  Eve's  defection  was 
facilitated  by  the  suggestion  of  the  serpent  in  the 
garden,  and  Adam's  by  Eve.  Christ's  temptation 
is  attributed  to  the  devil.  All  were  tempted,  and 
all  doubtless  had  power  to  resist  the  temptation  and 
obey  God  ;  else  they  were  the  hopeless  and  helpless 
victims  of  a  remorseless  despotism.  (I  hesitate  to 
speculate  concerning  our  Savior's  human  nature. 
It  is  enough  to  know  that  with  the  fallen  angels, 
with  Adam  and  Eve,  was  the  power  to  obey.) 

Adam  was,  of  course,  obedient  until  he  was 
assaulted  with  the  temptation  presented  by  the 
serpent,  and  this  was  probably  the  first  temptation 
he  ever  encountered.  But  this  obedience  was  so 
nearly  a  mere  surrender  to  his  natural  inclinations 
as  scarcely  to  require  a  distinct  and  sharply  defined 
act  of  his  will,  and  such  obedience  would,  I  suppose, 
partake  more  of  the  character  of  innocence  than  of 
virtue.  But  with  the  subtle  temptation  came  the 
real  conflict,  when  he  was  by  his  circumstances 
forced  to  a  voluntary  decision  of  the  fearful  ques- 
tion, whether  he  would  obey  God  or  yield  to  the 
tempter. 

Obedience,  to  be  such  as  the  law  requires,  must 


1 68  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

be  something  more  than  such  as  results  from  mere 
inclination  without  any  conscious  and  well  defined 
act  of  the  will  put  forth  in  deference  to  the  rule  of 
duty.  That  kind  of  obedience  that  results  in  the 
confirmation  of  the  agent  in  a  state  of  indefectible 
holiness  includes  the  power  to  resist  all  temptations 
that  can  be  presented  to  the  mind,  that  is,  the 
power  of  full  surrender  of  the  whole  man  to  God 
and  a  settled  purpose  of  resistance  to  evil  in  every 
form.  This  confirmation  is  ethical,  relates  to 
the  state  of  the  intelligence,  the  sensibility,  and  the 
will,  and  not  a  mere  judicial  act  of  the  divine 
Mind.  The  judicial  theory  of  confirmation,  either 
in  sin  or  holiness,  is  without  authority  from  the 
Bible,  there  being,  so  far  as  I  know,  not  a  word 
that  authorizes  it  from  Genesis  to  Revelation.  In 
my  judgment,  it  is  also  entirely  contrary  to  science 
and  subversive  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the 
moral  government  of  God.  It  is  at  best  a  sort  of 
theological  crotchet,  designed  to  meet  the  exigen- 
cies of  an  unphilosophical  scheme  of  moral  gov- 
ernment. 

But  it  is  impossible  to  know  how  many  acts  of 
obedience  are  required  to  so  form  the  habit  of  obe- 
dience, as  to  render  the  newly  created  agent  proof 
against  all  temptations,  and  therefore  indefectible. 
It  is  very  evident,  on  the  contrary,  that  one  single 
and  premeditated  act  of  disobedience  is  suflScient 
to  confirm  such  an  agent  in  a  state  of  sin.  This 
results  from  two  facts,  one  legal,  and  the  other 
moral. 

I.  The  nature  of  the  law  is  such  as  requires  per- 


NECESSITATED    VIRTUE.  169 

sonal  and  perpetual  obedience,  so  that  the  trans- 
gressor cannot  atone  for  his  offense. 

2.  By  the  act  of  the  transgressor  his  heart  is 
alienated  from  God,  and  he  is  made  a  servant  of 
sin  or  a  child  of  sin  by  his  wicked  works.  Hence 
he  is  unable  to  reconcile  himself  to  its  authority. 

From  what  has  been  said  it  must  be  apparent  to 
all,  that  intelligence,  sensibility,  and  will  are  indis- 
pensable attributes  of  a  moral  agent;  that  all  such 
creatures,  and  none  others,  are  capable  of  virtue 
and  vice,  and  therefore  proper  subjects  of  moral 
government;  also  that  all  newly  created  minds  that 
are  capable  of  virtue  are  capable  of  vice,  or  that 
the  possibility  of  virtue  is  the  possibility  of  vice. 
The  power  not  to  sin  is  the  power  to  sin.  The 
power  to  sin  is  the  power  not  to  sin.  By  way  of 
illustration,  it  may  be  said  that  the  sensibility  is 
the  power  alike  of  pleasure  or  pain.  Hence  the 
possibility  of  pleasure  is  the  possibility  of  pain. 
To  give  the  capacity  of  one  is  to  give  the  capacity 
of  the  other.  To  destroy  one  capacity  is  to  destroy 
the  other  capacity. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

GENERAL  CONCLUSIONS. 

It  would  be  supremely  absurd,  not  to  say  wicked, 
for  any  finite  mind  to  pretend  to  a  rational  and  full 
comprehension  of  the  ways  of  God  and  his  provi- 
dence. When  science  and  religion  have  thrown 
their  concentrated  light  upon  the  dark  problem  of 
evil  we  see  only  enough  to  assure  us  of  our  own 
ignorance  and  utter  inability  to  bring  the  mighty 
problem  to  a  satisfactory  solution.  In  fact,  when 
we  fix  our  attention  on  any  form  of  existence, 
whether  physical  or  spiritual,  and  attempt  to  trace 
it  in  all  of  its  relations  we  soon  find  ourselves  in  a 
maze  of  darkness  which  we  cannot  dissipate,  and 
we  feel  compelled  to  be  content  with  a  very  limited 
amount  of  knowledge,  even  of  the  simplest  and 
most  familiar  phenomena.  From  the  Bible  and  na- 
ture, however,  we  may  be  able  to  form  some  gen- 
eral conclusions  that  may  serve  as  guides  and 
boundaries  to  our  speculations  concerning  natural, 
as  well  as  moral,  evils.  Among  these  general  con- 
clusions or  judgments  I  will  name  the  following: 

That  the  God  and  author  of  the  physical  and 
moral  world  exercises  absolute  sovereignty  over  all 
his  works.  This  he  does  in  such  a  way  that  the 
prerogatives  of  sovereignty  never  trespass  upon  the 
claims  of  his  universal  fatherhood.  As  Governor 
and  Father  his  justice  and  parental  love  never  col- 
lide.    In  fact  justice  and  benevolence  may  be  re- 


General  conclusions.  171 

garded  as  different  phases  of  the  divine  goodness; 
for  an  unjust  administrator  is  necessarily  destitute 
of  true  benevolence  and  an  unbenevolent  adininis- 
trator  cannot  be  just.  If  this  is  true  it  then  fol- 
lows as  a  moral  impossibility  for  even  divine  Sov- 
ereignty to  institute  a  government  over  accounta- 
ble creatures  which  is  not,  both  in  its  physical 
and  moral  aspect,  designed  for  the  highest  good  of 
the  subjects,  or  in  which  the  good  of  the  subjects 
is  not  made  potentially  identical  with  the  glory 
of  the  governor.  In  the  light  of  these  facts,  which 
no  intelligent  optimist  will  call  in  question,  we 
conclude  that  all  evil  in  such  a  government  is  for- 
eign to  its  designs,  and  if  it  exists  at  all  must  be 
the  result  of  some  abnormal  action  on  the  part  of 
the  subjects.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that 
every  moral  government,  from  its  essential  nature, 
is  liable  to  this  abnormal  action  and  hence  to  moral 
evil.  This  abnormal  action  and  consequent  moral 
evil  can  originate  nowhere  except  in  the  voluntary 
action  of  the  subject  of  the  government.  This 
moral  evil  does  not  directly  or  indirectly  change 
anything  in  the  exterior  physical  world,  nor  any- 
thing fundamental  in  the  nature  of  the  sinner.  It 
does,  however,  subordinate  his  physical  and  intel- 
lectual powers  to  the  purposes  of  evil  and  at  the 
same  time  sadly  changes  his  ethical  relations  to  the 
exterior  world.  Hence  I  think  it  is  true  that  sin 
is  the  only  source  of  moral  evil  and  the  subjective 
source  of  physical  evil.  By  this  last  statement  I 
mean  that  if  moral  evil  had  not  entered  our  world  the 
laws  of  the  physical  world  would  have  been  attended 


172  ANTHROPOLOGY. 

with  the  same  phenomena  that  now  attend  them. 
These  would  not  have  been  of  the  nature  of  evil  at 
all  and  would  not  have  been  so  esteemed.  Even  a 
natural  death  or  a  change  of  state  would  have  proba- 
bly been  esteemed  a  good  rather  than  an  evil,  even 
as  it  often  is  now  so  esteemed.  In  the  providence 
of  the  all  wise  and  benevolent  Ruler,  in  our  present 
sinful  state,  thousands  of  events  occur  which,  con- 
sidered apart  from  their  actual  consequences,  are 
felt  to  be  great  evils.  But  if  estimated  in  connec- 
tion with  their  consequences  prove  that  they  are 
not  great  evils  but  great  blessings.  I  feel  quite 
safe  in  saying  all  physical  events  that  occur  inde- 
pendently of  human  agency  are,  when  considered 
in  their  possible  consequences,  blessings  in  dis- 
guise. We  in  the  meantime  blindly  esteem  them 
great  evils.  Even  individual  and  national  sins  are 
often  overruled  for  good.  The  wrath  of  man  is  of- 
ten made  to  praise  God,  not  that  there  is  any  pos- 
sible good  in  sin  in  itself  or  as  a  means.  But  God 
in  his  goodness  makes  it  an  occasion  of  blessing,  in 
some  way,  to  somebody,  thus  verifying  the  truth 
that  where  sin  abounds  grace  much  more  abounds. 
This  fact  I  think  is  exemplified  in  a  most  wonder- 
ful manner  in  relation  to  Adam's  sin.  In  connec- 
tion with  the  above  statement  I  wish  to  lay  down  a 
few  general  propositions  touching  this  subject. 
They  are  not  as  fully  expressed  as  they  might  be, 
but  they  cover  a  part  at  least  of  this  vast  field. 

I.  Physical  death,  as  a  deprivation  of  animal  life 
and  a  change  of  state,  is  natural  to  man,  and  as 
such  is  not  a  supernatural  visitation. 


GENERAL   CONCLUSIONS.  173 

2.  All  that  is  deeply  distressful  in  physical  dis- 
ease or  death,  or  the  accessories  of  death,  are  the 
results  of  the  violation  of  natural  laws,  and  may  be 
indirectly  or  remotely  the  results  of  sin  somewhere. 

3.  That  all  painful  anxiety  and  apprehensions 
concerning  the  future  are  the  result  of  conscious  sin. 
This  is  the  sting  of  death;  its  source  is  not  phys- 
ical, but  moral. 

4.  Neither  physical  death  nor  physical  evil  of 
any  kind  is  in  strict  propriety  of  terms  moral  re- 
tributive punishment,  i.  e.,  punishment  in  exact 
accordance  both  in  measure  and  kind  with  the 
committed  sins  or  their  punishment,  i.  e.,  punish- 
ment flowing  necessarily  out  of  the  sins  themselves, 
and  as  enduring  as  the  mind  itself 

5.  All  physical  evil  is  providential  and  strictly 
administrative  in  character,  and  not  retributive.  It 
is  always  temporary,  and,  when  strictly  judicial, 
always  arbitrary,  on  the  part  of  the  divine  Admin- 
istrator, i.  e.,  it  has  no  natural  connection  with  the 
nature  of  the  sins  committed.  Hence  the  evil  may 
come  in  the  form  of  sickness,  plague,  pestilence, 
wind,  fire,  flood,  earthquakes,  famines,  or  war. 

By  way  of  illustrating  these  two  kinds  of  pun- 
ishment, I  may  refer  you  to  the  Antedeluvians  and 
Sodomites,  both  judicially  and  administratively  de- 
stroyed. The  judgments  were  arbitrary  and  tem- 
porary, but  now  they  suffer  retribution  proper. 
This  comes  to  them  through  the  laws  of  their 
mind,  and  must  be  as  durable  as  the  mind  itself 

This  is  the  worm  that  dieth  not,  the  unquench- 
able fire,  the  vengeance  of  eternal  fire. 


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